Two of the state’s mightiest homegrown financiers, J.P. Morgan Chase CEO Bill Harrison and Credit Suisse First Boston chief John Mack, are going all-out to back their fellow Tar Heel. To help kick off Bowles’s campaign, the high-powered pair agreed to co-host a December 10 fundraiser at J.P. Morgan’s Park Avenue headquarters in New York. Bowles and Harrison were roommates during the early 1960s at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and later shared lodgings as fledgling bankers in New York. Bowles knows Mack, a Duke grad, from his stint at Morgan Stanley in the 1970s. Harrison and Mack are only two of the prominent money men co-hosting Bowles’s fundraiser; buyout kings Henry Kravis and Ted Forstmann are also lending their support. “It means a lot to me that they would go out of their way not just to raise money for me but really to endorse me,” says Bowles. “I think they both value the experience that I’ve had, not just in Washington but also in the financial community. I take great pride in their support.”
