Joseph R. Perella
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Joseph R. Perella was born in 1941 in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York, son of a transit worker father and schoolteacher mother. He had to turn down a Harvard college education because he could not afford to attend. Instead, he graduated from Lehigh University in 1964 on a full scholarship, becoming an accountant. Then he attended and graduated from Harvard Business School in May, 1972.
In the fall of 1972 he was hired as an associate at First Boston, where he worked in the mergers and acquisitions department. He remained with First Boston until 1985 when he teamed up with associate Bruce Wasserstein to create their own mergers and acquisitions advisory business as Wasserstein Perella & Co.. Their company was at the forefront of the 1980s/90s boom in corporate takeovers.
Joseph Perella left Perella Wasserstein in 1992/1993 to join Morgan Stanley where he was first head of mergers and acquisitions then chairman of the Institutional Securities and Investment Banking Group. Perella and other top executives resigned from Morgan Stanley in 2005 in the wake of policy disagreements with Chairman Philip J. Purcell. Purcell soon resigned following more high level departures from Morgan Stanley.
One of the most high profile deals Perella advised on following his departure from Morgan Stanley was advising on the Bank of America takeover of leading credit card company MBNA. In November 2005, Perella and former Morgan Stanley banker Terry Meguid announced they were opening an investment banking boutique. On June 15 2006, Perella announced the formation of a new financial services firm, Perella Weinberg Partners based in New York and London.
Joseph Perella is a Lehigh University trustee and in 2004 he and his wife Amy donated $10 million to the College of Business and Economics to endow the "Perella Department of Finance." The College announced that it will use the interest from the largest such donation in its history to fund a minimum of four endowed positions. In addition, the couple created "The Amy and Joseph Perella Professor of Medicine" at Yale University. He also sits on the MTA Board, and unlike many of his fellow boardmembers, is the only boardmember to continually vote to raise the salaries of transit workers during every MTA workers contract hearings. Joseph Perella's net worth is estimated at approximately 1.1 billion dollars, earning him the 374th spot on Forbes list of 400 richest Americans. He is the richest Brooklyn-born Italian American alive today.
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