Leibowitz’s 35 years of toil, mostly as a sell-side media analyst, earned him a record 25 first-place appearances on II’s All-America Research Team. Much of that time was spent at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, which Credit Suisse Group acquired in 2000. For the past year the 60-year-old Leibowitz has been CSFB’s director of media strategy, working with both the research department and the firm’s media banking unit. When his contract expired last month, he decided to hang out his shingle. “DLJ was a very special place,” he says. “I was not able to do [at CSFB] what I did there.” His new fund launches March 1 - he’s looking to raise $50 million to $100 million initially - and Leibowitz hopes it will allow him to do what he loves: pure research. “I can now really focus on the things that interest me, rather than marketing and investment banking and all the things equity research has become.”
