Mary Meeker

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Mary Meeker at the Web 2.0 conference, 2005

Mary G. Meeker (born September ??, 1959 in rural Portland, Indiana, USA) is an influential[1] Wall Street securities analyst and investment banker primarily associated with dot coms and the 1990s internet bubble.

Meeker became known as "Queen of the Net" after being dubbed so by Barron's Magazine in 1998[2].

Meeker holds a B.A. in psychology from DePauw University (1981) and a M.B.A. in finance from Cornell University (1986).

[edit] Career

In 1982, Meeker joined Merill Lynch as a stockbroker. After graduate school, she began as an analyst covering the technology sector at Salomon Brothers in 1986. She worked for SG Cowen during 1990-91 before moving to Morgan Stanley to specialize in covering the personal computer and new media industries.

In the early 1990s^{[citation needed]}, while spending time with Ray Ozzie and Jim Manzi of Lotus Notes and Steve Case of America Online and watching a demo by John Gage of Sun Microsystems, Meeker began to appreciate that online connectivity could transform the way people communicate as well as the operation of all industries^{[citation needed]}. She became known as an early Wall Street champion of the Internet. In August 1995, Morgan Stanley (with Meeker as research analyst) served as lead manager for the initial public offering of Netscape Communications. Later that year, Meeker and Chris DePuy at Morgan Stanley, published "The Internet Report", a landmark Morgan Stanley industry report which became known as "the bible" for investors in the dot com boom[3] and went into popular circulation. In 1996 and 1997, Morgan Stanley published similar landmark reports led by Meeker on internet advertising and e-commerce.

Cover of Meeker & DePuy's landmark 1995 report

Successful stocks Meeker championed early on included Microsoft, Netscape, AOL, Amazon.com, Yahoo! and eBay. Failed picks included AOL after its takeover of Time Warner, Excite@Home, drugstore.com, and priceline.com.

Meeker was vilified in the press [4] as one of a number of star analysts who were questioned in fraud investigations after the bursting of the dot com bubble in 2000. Meeker was cleared of any wrongdoing, although several colleagues were charged and Morgan Stanley and nine other investment firms were compelled to participate in a global legal settlement.

As of March 2006, Meeker is a managing director at Morgan Stanley, serving as leader of the investment bank's global technology research team with a particular focus on the 21st century internet boom in China (in 2004, Morgan Stanley published Meeker's "China Internet Report").