Bank of America’s former head of corporate and investment banking, Ed Carter, is back on the Street. He’s CEO of TCG Financial Partners, a merchant bank that opened in New York last month, with former Defense secretary William Cohen as chairman. “I had enough of the politics of large Wall Street firms and wanted to run my own show,” says Carter.
The 51-year-old took two years off, traveling with his family and refurbishing a 6,000-square-foot Tudor manor in Greenwich, Connecticut. In March he decided he’d join forces with Cohen, 64, who headed the Defense Department from 1997 to 2001 and then formed the Cohen Group, a Washington consulting firm specializing in defense policy. TCG Financial will also focus on the defense sector, advising on mergers and acquisitions. It also plans to raise a $300 million private equity fund. Carter, who worked at Merrill Lynch and Deutsche Bank before spending three years with BofA, anticipates an active M&A market in such areas as defense electronics, logistics and research and development.
“Everybody likes to make the Cohen-Carlucci analogy,” says Carter, referring to Carlyle Group, the $18 billion private equity firm set up in 1987 by Frank Carlucci, who was secretary of Defense in the late ‘80s. “I hope 15 years from now that we’re as successful as they have been,” he says.
