Stephen Pitts

Stephen Pitts has worked in Investment Banking for over thirty years in Mergers & Acquisitions, Corporate Finance, Leveraged Finance, Restructuring and Distressed Portfolio Management.

Over this time, he has worked at Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and Bank of America in the Americas, Asia and Europe where he is now based.

He has held a variety of positions throughout his career including Head of Leveraged Finance at Deutsche Bank Europe and Global Head of Special Situations at Deutsche Bank.

He was also Head of Southeast Asia Corporate Finance and M&A execution at Morgan Stanley, and Head of High Yield Origination at Goldman Sachs Asia.

Steve also worked for KPN-Qwest as Head of Corporate and Business Development where he negotiated the KPN-Qwest-IBM Business Alliance.

He has led many landmark transactions including the reopening of the high yield market with the Wind 2009 €2.7 billion high yield offering; sole managed SoftBank’s acquisition financing of Fortress Investment Group; Liberty Global’s £15 billion acquisition of Virgin Media; SoftBank’s $20 billion acquisition of Sprint in 2012 and $15 billion purchase of Vodafone Japan in 2006; IPO of both Altice & Numericable and their €17 billion acquisition of SFR in 2013-2014 and the €10 billion buyout of TDC. Also sole-managed SoftBank’s 2017 $1.4 billion acquisition financing of Fortress.

He also restructured some of Deutsche Bank’s most problematic situations including KPN-Qwest/GTS, UPC, NTL, Vivendi Universal, Prada, Inmobiliara Colonial and Actavis where he restructured the company over a three-year period (hiring new management and setting up new headquarters in Zug) resulting in a successful sale to Watson to more than double its previous value.

He is a graduate of the California Institute of Technology with Honors (Engineering & Applied Science and Economics) and was also awarded Putnam Competition honors (a US- nationwide mathematical contest) during that time.

After working at TRW’s Ballistic Missiles Division for the US Defense Department, he then graduated from the University of Chicago Graduate Schools of Law and Business, earning a JD/MBA degree in Finance and Accounting and having worked for, and been advised by, Professor Merton Miller (later Noble Laureate for being the co-author of the Modigliani-Miller theorem).