Caroline Silver
Managing Director, Moelis & Co.
With a prime role in two global exchange mergers last year, Caroline Silver has no problem with name recognition in the sector. As Michael Overlander, the CEO of derivatives broker Sucden Financial told Bloomberg last year, "Her name should be changed to Caroline Gold."
Overlander and others in the commodities and capital markets say few advisers are as tuned into their field as Silver, a 25-year investment banking veteran in her fourth year heading the financial institutions group at Moelis & Co.
Silver's big scores recently came in negotiating a $2.2 billion price-more than 150 times earnings-for the London Metal Exchange, and in advising NYSE Euronext on its $8.2 billion sale (yet to be approved by European regulators) to the IntercontinentalExchange. Both deals are credited with awakening a previously moribund mergers and acquisitions market for exchanges, which had grown gun-shy after several global deals, including Deutsche Boerse's attempted buyout of NYSE Euronext, got nixed by regulators over the last three years.
Silver's advisory background at Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Merrill Lynch has put her at the heart of major exchange deals since 2001, including Euronext's IPO and eventual sale to the NYSE.
Through her work with a U.K. charity tackling global poverty, the London-based Silver has spent time in Africa and personally funds a microfinance initiative enabling the production of Shea butter by female farmers in northern Ghana. Silver also is involved in the Prince of Wales' initiative to help the unemployed in the over-50 age group refashion themselves as entrepreneurs.
