Raymond J. McGuire

Investment banker Raymond J. McGuire was born on January 23, 1957, in Dayton, Ohio. After graduating from the Hotchkiss School in 1975, McGuire enrolled in Harvard University. He went on to graduate from Harvard University cum laude with his A.B. degree in English in 1979. McGuire was awarded a Rotary Fellowship to attend the University of Nice in France in 1980. In 1984, McGuire graduated from Harvard Business School with his M.B.A. degree and from Harvard Law School with his J.D. degree.

McGuire began his career in the mergers and acquisitions department at First Boston Corporation. In 1988, when Joseph R. Perella and Bruce Wasserstein, top officers at First Boston Corporation, left to start their own firm, McGuire went with them. At Wasserstein Perella & Co., McGuire played a key role in many transactions, including Pitney Bowes, Inc.’s acquisition of Ameriscribe. He served as a partner and managing director at Wasserstein Perella & Co. from 1991 to 1994, and then became the managing director of mergers & acquisitions at Merrill Lynch Investment, Inc. In 2000, McGuire was appointed as the the global co-head of mergers & acquisitions at Morgan Stanley where he advised the $19.8 billion sale of Nabisco Holdings to the Philip Morris Company and Pfizer’s sale of its Schick Wilkinson Sword business to Energizer for $930 million in 2003. In 2005, McGuire left Morgan Stanley and was appointed as the co-head of investment banking at Citigroup Corporate and Investment Banking. He became the head of global banking in 2009. While there, McGuire managed more than two thousand employees and advised business mergers and acquisitions valued at more than $200 billion, such as Time Warner, Inc.’s $45 billion separation from Time Warner Cable.

McGuire was named chairman of the board of the Studio Museum in Harlem and vice chairman of the board and investment committee chairman of the Whitney Museum of American Art. He also served on the executive committee of the International Center of Photography, as a trustee of the Lincoln Center and chairman of the board of the De La Salle Academy, and as a member of the board of the Mayor’s Cultural Affairs Advisory Committee for the City of New York. In addition, he served as a trustee of New York-Presbyterian Hospital. For Harvard University, he has served as a member of the Overseers and Directors Nominating Committee.

In 2002, Black Enterprise magazine named McGuire one of the “Top 50 African Americans on Wall Street.” He has also received the Alumni Professional Achievement Award from the Harvard Business School, and was named a Distinguished Patron of the Arts by the Pratt Institute.

Raymond J. McGuire was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on June 24, 2013.