Donald B Marron

Donald B Marron

Donald B Marron is 69, but the light in his eyes still shines brightly and he’s full of enthusiasm. The entrepreneurial nature and ambition that saw him through the creation of his first business at the age of 24 continue to drive him today. Marron is best known for building up securities firm PaineWebber and its subsequent sale to UBS in November 2000. After 23 years at PaineWebber, he negotiated the transaction with UBS’s Marcel Ospel. “We were doing extremely well and we were very happy as an independent firm,” Marron says.

“When I met Marcel Ospel, the chairman of UBS bank, we immediately had a connection because he understood our business.” He maintains that the deal was good for PaineWebber’s shareholders and clients. “The thing I’m most pleased with is that we were able to offer jobs to 95% of our people,” he says.

Marron began his career at the age of 17 as a trainee at wealth management firm New York Trust Company and later worked at economist Lionel Edie’s investment consulting firm. After only seven years, in 1959, he set up his first business ? a securities firm called DB Marron and Company. Seven years later his firm merged with Mitchell Hutchins and at the age of 34 Marron was named president. “We built it into a leading institutional research firm and merged it into PaineWebber [in 1977],” says Marron. Three years later he became PaineWebber’s CEO.

Adviser on strategy

After UBS bought PaineWebber, he became non-executive chairman of UBS America for a further three years where he was involved in advising Ospel at a strategic level. In September last year he gave up this role, 44 years after setting up DB Marron

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So why did he finally decide to say goodbye? “After we did the deal and it looked like it was going well, the obvious question was ?what would happen next?'” he says. “We had been doing a certain amount of private-equity investing within PaineWebber. So, several of us at PaineWebber thought that would be a natural extension to start a private-equity firm.”

At the end of 2000, when he was already over the average retirement age in the US, Marron and five others launched private-equity firm Lightyear Capital. He says one of his partners, Mark F Vassallo came up with the name. “It sounds like the future,” he says. So no inspiration from the cartoon action hero then.

The timing of the launch wasn’t as propitious as Marron and his partners might have hoped. The economic environment in 2001, along with the events of 9/11, meant it was a tough year for Lightyear. However, the firm has been doing deals over the past two years and now has seven controlled investments, the majority of which are in financial services businesses.

Marron also hopes to take advantage of opportunities in Europe. Last July, the US-based firm made its first major investment in Europe when it bought the Julius Baer brokerage from the private bank. Marron says: “It’s very similar to the old Mitchell Hutchins business,” he says. “It fits the Eliot Spitzer model very well. We think the future for independent research is outstanding.” The firm has since been renamed as Kepler Equities, after the German mathematician and astronomer.

Marron is not only a Wall Street legend, business builder, private-equity expert, husband and father ? he’s also an art lover and philanthropist. “Of the older artists, there’s no doubt, that I’m most attracted to Matisse.”

Does he plan to retire soon? Unequivocally the answer is no. “I’m loving what I’m doing and there’s lots to do.”