Keynotes
Nick Sakellariadis
Managing Director, Mergers & Acquisitions, Citigroup
Nick Sakellariadis began his investment banking career in 1978 and is now Managing Director in Citi’s Mergers & Acquisitions Department. He is a member of the Advisory Committee, which reviews and approves all fairness and valuation opinions rendered by the Firm. He has served as an advisor in transactions totaling in excess of $200 billion. Mr. Sakellariadis covers the Automotive, Homebuilding and Building Products sectors, as well as other industrial companies. He has represented clients such as General Motors, Volkswagen, FIAT, Daimler Chrysler, Cemex, Centex, UDC Homes, Votorantim, Pulte Homes, Continental Homes, Lewis Homes, Engle Homes, Owens Corning, EDS and National Computer Systems. For ten years he headed the Financial Restructuring Group, and was involved in the reorganizations of among others, Texaco, Western Union, Chrysler, LTV Steel, Federated Department Stores, Macy’s, Revco, Continental Airlines, TWA, Pan AM, Eastern Airlines and America West Airlines.
Nick graduated from Harvard College and obtained an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School, and a J.D. degree from the Harvard Law School. He was a Fulbright/ITT Scholar in 1973-1974.
Steven J. Goulart
Chief Investment Officer, MetLife
Steven J. Goulart is executive vice president and chief investment officer of MetLife, Inc. Named to this position in May 2011, Goulart oversees MetLife’s $450 billion general account portfolio and more than 650 investment and support professionals around the world.
Prior to becoming CIO, Goulart served as senior managing director and head of MetLife’s portfolio management unit since January 2011. He joined MetLife in 2006 to head the company’s mergers & acquisitions unit, and in July 2009 was also named treasurer. In these roles, he was responsible for the strategic management of MetLife’s financial resources, including capital planning and financings, risk-based capital management, liquidity and cash management, international treasury and mergers and acquisitions. In both of these key finance positions, Goulart was integral to MetLife’s successful $16.4 billion acquisition of Alico in 2010.
At MetLife, Goulart oversaw the completion of financings exceeding $21 billion and more than fifteen strategic transactions, including the innovative tax-free split-off of MetLife’s majority stake in Reinsurance Group of America, Incorporated, the acquisition of SafeGuard Health Enterprises, Inc.; AFORE Actinver, S.A. de C.V.; EverBank Reverse Mortgage LLC; and First Horizon Home Loans, as well as the sales of Texas Life Insurance Company and MetLife’s stake in MSI MetLife in Japan.
Over the course of his career, Goulart has led or participated in many transactions in the industry, including a number of insurance company demutualizations, equity and debt offerings and initial public offerings. Prior to joining MetLife, Goulart was a senior managing director in Bear Stearns’ financial institutions group. Prior to joining Bear Stearns in 2001, he was managing director in Morgan Stanley’s global insurance group, where he led U.S. client coverage of the industry and was responsible for primary investment banking relationships with many insurance and other financial services companies. Prior to joining Morgan Stanley, Goulart was managing director in the financial institutions group at Merrill Lynch, where he had been since 1984.
Goulart received a B.S. in business administration from the University of Pacific, where he was elected to the Pacific Athletic Hall of Fame and served as a member of the board of regents. He also holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.
Antonio Weiss
Global Head of Investment Banking, Lazard
Mr. Weiss is Global Head of Investment Banking for Lazard. He joined the Firm in New York in 1993 and became a Managing Director in January 1999. From 2001 to 2009, he was based in Paris, where he served as a Vice Chairman of European Investment Banking for Lazard and helped develop the Firm’s activities across Continental Europe.
Mr. Weiss has advised clients in a broad range of industries and geographies, most often in transactions with a contested or cross-border dimension. Recent transactions include the acquisition of Motorola by Google, the buy-out of Burger King by 3G, the acquisition of Cadbury by Kraft, the sale of the North American bottling operations of Coca-Cola Enterprises to Coca-Cola, the acquisition of Anheuser Busch by InBev, the merger of KKR and KPE and the acquisitions of Gerber and Novartis Medical Nutrition by Nestlé.
Mr. Weiss is a graduate of Yale College and Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar and Loeb Fellow. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and Publisher of The Paris Review, the leading literary quarterly.
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