Meet Raymond McGuire, the investment banker who provided financial advice on a historic $600b global transaction

Raymond McGuire learned the value of hard work at a very early age; however, the most important lesson his mother and grandfather instilled in him was the essence of education in one’s life. He is a product of a strong family value system and teachers who identified his stellar academic ability at a very young age. He was raised and trained by a single mother, Wiletha McGuire, and his grandparents in Dayton.

To give Raymond and his siblings good opportunities in life, the family relocated from Georgia, where the Jim Crow laws offered African Americans limited opportunities, to Dayton. When they relocated, his mother worked effortlessly to ensure Raymond and his two brothers got the best opportunities in life.

While in fifth grade, his teacher noticed the young genius was really intelligent, however, the educational system at the time did not enable him to achieve his full potential. With the help of his fifth-grade teacher, Raymond got a partial scholarship to enable him to attend a well-endowed school.

At 16, one of his teachers challenged him to compete with students at one of the elite East Coast boarding schools. His academic trajectory was changed when he emerged as one of the top contenders; the demonstration of his intelligence gained him the opportunity to go to Connecticut and Hotchkiss.

He later gained admission to study at Harvard, where he received his A.B. in 1979 and continued to study for his M.B.A and J.D. from the Harvard Business and Harvard Law Schools respectively. From there he began his journey to financial success in 1984 with the mergers and acquisitions group of the First Boston Corporation.

Raymond later moved to Wasserstein Perella & Co., Inc, where he became a partner and managing director in 1991, according to Hotchkiss. He etched his name in the history books of America when he began another phase of his financial advisory journey. He got employed as the co-head of mergers and acquisitions at Morgan Stanley and as managing director in the mergers and acquisitions group of Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc.

Before he got this job, he worked at Citi for 13 years as the group’s global head of corporate and investment banking. Under his tenure, Citi rode on its global network to satisfy the investment banking needs of its multinational and sovereign customers. Raymond was the lead adviser on transactions across global industries and geographies which were pegged at over $600 billion, including Time Warner and AT&T, the fifth-largest transaction in history.

He has earned his place on Wall Street as a doyen in the financial and investment banking advisory space, a remarkable feat for an African American who began life with many struggles and moved to the apex of the financial markets. He has been a strong advocate for closing the racial gap in the U.S. with his keen focus on improved wages, education, housing, and investment.