Carol Bernick, executive chairman of Alberto-Culver, was facing the decision of a lifetime. She was going to sell the shampoo maker her father had started in 1955 or she was going to plunge into foreign markets –Â Japan and Brazil –Â to keep up with competitors. To help make her choice, she called just one banker: Byron Trott, chief executive and chairman of BDT Capital Partners in Chicago.
Bernick, 62, says she considered Trott a partner in preserving her family’s wealth; she’d worked with him for 2 1/2 decades as he advanced at Goldman Sachs.
Bernick took Trott’s advice and agreed to sell Alberto-Culver to Rotterdam-based Unilever for $3.7 billion in 2010.
“Byron helps you think through what’s best for the long-term health of your family and your company without the pressure or glitz that sometimes comes from the East Coast,” Bernick says.
Five years after leaving Goldman, Trott, 55, is parlaying longtime links to the moneyed elite into an investment and advisory firm that helps rich families get richer.
BDT — for Byron David Trott — plays two roles for its well-heeled clients. It provides advice on whether to merge, expand or sell businesses, as it did for Alberto. And it raises money from them to invest in other mainly family-led companies, directly or through BDT’s private-equity funds.
BDT managed $6.3 billion in client assets as of Dec. 31 and is raising $5.2 billion more, according to regulatory filings.
“Byron’s got a blue-chip list of people who trust him,” says John Canning, chairman of Madison Dearborn Partners, the largest Midwestern private-equity firm. “He’s played a key role in Chicago. Since most large investment banks are headquartered elsewhere, he’s been able to establish a unique practice advising on extremely large transactions.”
