Simon Hirst

Joint head of Global M&A at Commerzbank.

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Quite a number of British investment bankers have arrived at their jobs via Eton, Oxford and an MBA. Simon Hirst, though, has taken the route in tandem. At almost every stage he has been accompanied by his identical twin Julian. The brothers' careers have since diverged - Simon recently left ABN Amro to become joint head of M&A at Commerzbank and Julian is head of the internet team at UBS Warburg. For over 30 years, though, one would have been hard pressed to tell them apart.
They were born in London in 1958, their father David being a barrister who went on to become chairman of the Bar and later, with a knighthood, a judge of the Court of Appeal. (The twins' older brother, Jonathan Hirst QC, has followed his father to the oYce of chairman of the Bar.) The twins were in the same house at Eton and then went to Keble College, Oxford. They both rowed in the college eight (Simon was captain) and both took Wrst class-degrees in geography.
In 1980, Simon Hirst started his Wrst job with Hambros as an associate in the corporate Wnance department; Julian went to Samuel Montagu. Two years later they both won Thouron Fellowships in the same year to the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, to do MBAs.
Both then fancied jobs on Wall Street, but agreed to apply to diVerent Wrms, thinking it unlikely one would want them both. However, when Julian went for his interview at Lehman Brothers Kuhn Loeb in 1984 (just before its acquisition by American Express) he was asked if he would mind if they also talked to his brother, who had been picked out by the Wrm's headhunters at Wharton.

In those days, it was customary for Lehman to take potential recruits for a night on the town to see how they behaved. When the party pulled up outside the then fashionable Surf Club, the Hirst brothers did their chances no harm by being the only ones allowed in. Once within the rope, they managed to persuade the doorman to let the other Lehman bankers in.
The Hirst twins joined the general industrial group, working on a variety of bond, equity and M&A transactions - although not the same ones. Simon worked on deals for such companies as Reed International, USAir and Chrysler. In 1987, he helped run the largest equity oVering for an airline up to that time, when Lehman was global coordinator of a primary oVering of $500 million for USAir.
In 1990, the brothers came back to London to work in the M&A department under Bill Harrison, advising on deals for such clients as P&O, Hanson, British Aerospace, British Airways and British Telecom. Three years later, they were Wnally separated, when Simon was sent back to New York to act as investment banking originator for Argentina, Chile and Brazil.
The Latin American markets were very active at the time, particularly in Wxed income, and over the next three years Simon Hirst's clients included such companies as Transportadora de Gas del Sur, Telefónica de Argentina (Lehman was bookrunner of its inaugural $100 million Eurobond issue), and the Republic of Argentina (bookrunner of various international bond issues, including one for $1.3 billion).
In 1996 Simon Hirst returned to London and shortly after was approached by Salomon Smith Barney to head its European transportation group. "It proved to be a good opportunity," he recalls, "because it was a sector that wasn't really very well covered by a lot of the major competitors." Before long, Hirst's team, which he built from scratch, had a significant market share, acting as global coordinator on Alitalia, the largest airline privatization at that time, international lead manager on the Austrian Airlines deal and adviser on many other privatizations.
On the Xight home from one deal, Hirst was hailed by a banker he did not recognize. The banker proceeded to tell him all about Volkswagen's top-secret strategy for its takeover of Rolls-Royce. Eventually Hirst twigged. "I don't think I'm who you think I am," he said. "Are you by any chance confusing me with my brother?"
In 1999, Hirst was hired by ABN Amro to become head of UK corporate Wnance origination, but stayed just a year, deciding that the chance to become joint head of Commerzbank's global M&A business was too good to pass up. Both he and his co-head, Omar Bayoumi (who joined Commerzbank from Credit Suisse), will be based in London but will travel frequently to Frankfurt. They are contemplating doubling the head count in the bank's M&A team to 60 by the end of next year.
Although the Hirst brothers have had diVerent jobs for some years now, they remain close friends and continue to see a lot of each other, owning houses close to each other in Devon and belonging to the same pheasant-shooting syndicate.

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Simon Hirst

Joint head of Global M&A at Commerzbank.

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