Keith R. Harris
| Keith R Harris | |
|---|---|
| Born |
1953 Manchester, UK |
| Education | Phd in Economics |
| Occupation | Financier |
| Employer | Seymour Pierce |
Keith R. Harris is a London-based investment banker and financier with a 25-year career as a senior corporate finance and takeover advisor. He is a private equity investor that owns stakes in various businesses, including investment bank Seymour Pierce, and other varied holdings in sport and media.
Background
In senior positions at leading global banks Harris has advised on hundreds of debt and equity issues and complex cross border transactions, as well as acting for noteworthy clients and high profile transactions like the £13.5bn hostile bid for British American Tobacco by Kerry Packer, Sir James Goldsmith and Lord Rothschild, and continues to act for several high net worth families from the Middle East, Russia and India on sport and media related acquisitions. Harris was President of Morgan Grenfell Inc. (now owned by Deutsche Bank) and was the youngest ever director at the British bank, then departing to serve as head of international investment banking at the American firm Drexel Burnham Lambert.
from 1990 to 1994 he was Chief Executive of Apax Partners Worldwide LLP (formerly known as Apax Partners Ltd.), the multi-billion pound private equity asset management firm founded by American Alan Patricof and Sir Ronald Cohen. Harris was recruited by Sir William Purves, then Chairman of HSBC Group, to HSBC Investment Bank PLC where from 1994 to 1999 he served as global Chief Executive. At HSBC, Harris oversaw a staff of approximately 13,500 in forty-six countries. Under his leadership, HSBC Investment Bank achieved an average annual return on equity of more than 20% with over 30% in some years.
He became Executive Chairman of Seymour Pierce and an investor beginning in 2003 when he led a buyout group that acquired the UK investment bank founded in 1803. Seymour Pierce is the number one ranked investment bank in London for LSE AIM listed companies [1] and the bank is the leading strategic financial adviser to top-level professional football (soccer) teams, advising on dozens of acquisitions, including Chelsea, Newcastle, West Ham, Aston Villa and Manchester City, among others. Seymour Pierce is the number one ranked investment bank in London for London Stock Exchange AIM listed companies.[2] Seymour Pierce is a registered Nominated Advisor, or NOMAD, with authority delegated by the London Stock Exchange to regulate and supervise companies admitted to trade publicly on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) segment of the LSE. Seymour Pierce is the primary regulatory for approximately 80 public companies.
He also has been active in the insurance sector, serving since 1999 as a non-executive director of Benfield Group Plc., a reinsurance intermediary and capital advisory business, until its $1.75 billion acquisition by Aon Re Global in 2009 (NYSE: AON). Since 2009, he has been a director of Cooper Gay Swett & Crawford, one of the world's largest privately owned insurance and reinsurance brokers, headquartered in the City of London.[3]
Clients
Harris has been publicly associated with a number of high net worth clients. These include Roman Abramovich of Russia, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra of Thailand and Mohamed Fayed,[4] owner of Fulham football club and former owner of Harrods (sold to Qatari investors).
Harris advised Richard Desmond on the £125 million acquisition of the Express Group, the media company that publishes the Daily and Sunday Express newspaper.[5]
He represented American billionaire, Randy Lerner, in the acquisition of Aston Villa football club, one of the oldest clubs in the world. Lerner is also the owner of the Cleveland Browns whose fortune was originally derived from the MBNA banking group. It was a letter from William McGregor, a Director at Aston Villa, to four other clubs on March 2, 1888, which led to the formation of the world's first league football competition.
In 2010, he advised an unnamed Middle Eastern client on the attempted acquisition of Liverpool F.C..[6] He has acted for numerous other Middle Eastern clients from several countries in the region. He is believed to have developed many of his Middle East contacts whilst CEO of HSBC Investment Bank. The bank has long roots in the region, having acquired The British Bank of the Middle East in 1959 (now called HSBC Bank Middle East Limited) which was established in London in September 1889 originally as the Imperial Bank of Persia.
Red Knights
In 2010, a cabal of Britain’s leading businessmen calling themselves the Red Knights met at the offices of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, the law firm, to attempt to remove Malcolm Glazer, the club’s owner. The group then met with Keith Harris, a Manchester United fan and the chairman of investment bank Seymour Pierce, in order to broker a takeover.[7] Mr Harris, a lifelong Manchester United fan, joined as a member of the Red Knights consortium of financiers that sought to buy the club from the Glazer family, the controversial American owner of the football club.
The leading figures of the Red Knights are Jim O'Neill, a former HSBC investment bank chief executive and chief economist at Goldman Sachs; Seymour Pierce's Keith Harris; Paul Marshall, a partner at the hedge fund Marshall Wace; Richard Hytner of advertising agency Saatchi and Saatchi and lawyer Mark Rawlinson, a partner in Freshfields' corporate practice, who advised United during the Glazer takeover negotiations.[8]
Self-professed United fan Harris claimed the group wants "to do something for the good of Manchester United and the good of football." In the past, he has been involved in the takeovers of West Ham, Manchester City and Aston Villa, he has been extremely critical of the debt-burden the Glazers have brought to Manchester United.
Education
Harris obtained his Doctorate in Economics in 1977 and embarked on a career in investment banking.
References
- ↑ Hemscott AIM Rankings as published by the Financial Times
- ↑ "AIM Advisor Index". Vitesse Media. January 27, 2001. Retrieved 18 April 2011.
- ↑ Cooper Gay director
- ↑ The fixer with the world at his feet, The London Evening Standard
- ↑ The Rainmaker: Harris, the star striker The Telegraph
- ↑
- ↑ Hassan, Nabil; Roan, Dan (30 January 2010). "Wealthy Man Utd fans approach broker about takeover". BBC Sport (British Broadcasting Corporation). Retrieved 4 March 2010.
- ↑ Who are the Red Knights? BBC