Fairfax Financial Holdings’ $4.7 billion offer to take BlackBerry Inc. private has once again thrust Byron D. Trott into the spotlight.
Mr. Trott’s firm, BDT & Company, is one of the primary advisers to Fairfax and its unnamed partners, giving the merchant bank yet another prominent role in a year full of them. The firm is working with Bank of America Merrill Lynch and BMO Capital Markets.
If a deal is completed, it would be another feather in the cap of Mr. Trott, whose work has been praised by none other than Warren E. Buffett. Since striking off from Goldman Sachs over four years ago, the banker and his firm have kept busy with a number of deals.
This year alone, BDT has worked on deals like Molex‘s $7.2 billion sale to Koch Industries and Joh. A. Benckiser’s $9.8 billion takeover of D.E. Master Blenders 1753.
It also advised Coty in its ill-fated $10.7 billion hostile bid for Avon Products Inc. and Alberto Culver in its $3.7 billion sale to Unilever.
The presence of BDT as an adviser to Fairfax raises interesting questions about who might be involved in the deal. Fairfax hasn’t disclosed who else is in the consortium, but it’s worth noting that Mr. Trott’s firm has established itself as an adviser to wealthy families. It’s also worth noting that the main BDT banker on the potential transaction is Don McLellan, who formerly led mergers and acquisitions at Motorola and so has experience with the cellular handset industry.
