Cleantech Investment Bank Launches, Complete with PE Practice
In February 2008, Jeff McDermott asked his eldest son about what he might someday want to do for a career. “Wall Street, because it’s been so good for our family,” answered 14-year-old Dylan. McDermott paused. Wall Street had indeed been good to his family. He had risen to co-head of UBS investment banking, before stepping down in March 2007 to pursue new opportunities. But he also had “gotten wet in a thunderstorm,” leaving business school during the financial industry’s Golden Era. Had he been drawn to automobile manufacturing, McDermott realized, his family would not have been so fortunate. “I told him that I was in the right place at the right time, because Wall Street was growing and changing so fast,” McDermott says. “My son asked what that industry is now, and I said that, were I his age, I’d think about cleantech, because there is a real societal move toward sustainable living, and there are lots of new companies forming that will eventually consolidate. Plus, Dylan loves science. Then I stepped back and wondered why I wasn’t applying that same advice to myself.”
