Financial Engineer James F. Pomeroy: What Makes Him Tick
James F. Pomeroy started as a baseball
player and ended up engineering - to date - over US$1 trillion in project and
corporate finance deals. What’s his secret? What are the lessons learned? What would
he pass down to today’s financial engineering upstarts?
James
F. Pomeroy describes himself as “...very good at taking ‘chicken shit and
turning it into chicken salad’.” Would this ability be perhaps responsible for
his success in financial engineering. He started his finance career at Drexel
Burnham and now continues to launch and establish consulting and financial
services groups specializing in funding developing-stage companies, his area of
expertise. So what makes him tick...this finance whiz who engineered over US$1
trillion in corporate deals, as well as raised over US$4 billion in fund
managers-administered funds and assets?
How it all began
James F. Pomeroy was 21 when he decided
he was done playing baseball. Serendipity happened - and on a plane ride from
Detroit to New York City he was “adopted” by his would-be mentor Archibald
Albright, then at Drexel. Hired as
Albright’s Personal Assistant, James carried his bags for years - while reading
every detail of every deal that Drexel ever financed and meeting Corporate
America’s Who’s Who back in the day.
Convinced by his mentor that he had the skills and temperament to make it big in finance - and he had the
responsibility to develop this talent - James started his sure and steady climb
to the top of the financial engineering ladder.
If I were to do it again: Advice to
would-be financial engineers
Hindsight is 20/20, and according to
James, if he were to do it all over again he would have completed his law
degree even as he worked for the finance houses. Asked what else he would
advise would-be financial engineers, he replied:
● Listen - By listening twice as much as one talks, one can start to structure deals like those created by major international finance houses
like JP Morgan, Rothschild, and the like.
● Read and learn from history - Reading past histories of great private
merchant bankers like Rothschild, Warburg, and Morgan is the only way such a
journey can begin.
● Study - Master financial models
and financial applications.
● Stay up to date - Keep on top of current cutting-edge tools and how to
use the Internet smartly.
● Inject passion in your work - Use your finance skills to achieve
something real. Today’s finance
“young guns” seem to have it all, but passion is missing. It cannot be just about money, or clients
needs or your career…it has to be about passion and creating solutions by
thinking out of the box! And above all it is about giving it back to others who
need help.
The future of financial engineering
Financial Engineers have been pointed as
responsible parties for the collapse of the current financial markets. People point to the creation of things like
synthetic securities. They level accusations at distribution systems for
over-leveraged mortgage-backed instruments
that failed when a homeowner simply could not pay his mortgage. These
people had borrowed more than the property value so it was easy to simply walk
away.
But
according to James, financial engineers remain a critical backbone of nations
and sovereignties and tier 1 capital requirements for major financial houses.
Those who combine their talent with maturity, responsibility and discipline -
and eschew an “all or nothing” or “total responsibility” world - are the ones
who will create economic miracles and shape nations and states. Just like Rothschild and Morgan in their
time.
What the future
holds
With all of James F. Pomeroy’s
accomplishments in the finance arena and in the realm of philanthropy, is there
anything left for him to do?
According to him, “I think I would like
to write and lecture and teach at a prestigious university or college some day,
while my companies continue to grow businesses and help people finance their
dreams. I would also like to help young people rediscover the lost arts of wealth
creation, responsibility and discipline.
And, it would be really cool to find my last first date who became the
love of my life. Then together, watch
the kids become awesome through service to others! That would be so very, very cool.”
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