Lloyd Greif

Lloyd Greif, president and CEO of the Los Angeles investment banking firm Greif & Co., has pledged $5 million to USC’s Marshall School of Business to establish the Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies.

Greif, 42, earned an MBA from the Marshall School in 1979. Greif’s gift is the first naming gift ever made to an entrepreneur program by a graduate of that program.

The establishment of the Lloyd Greif Center coincides with the 25th anniversary of the Marshall School’s Entrepreneur Program, the first fully realized program of its kind offered at both the graduate and undergraduate levels.

Greif is chairman of the advisory council of the Marshall School’s Entrepreneur Program. In 1987, he was recognized by the program as Outstanding Alumni Entrepreneur of the Year.

“The establishment of this center will give greater emphasis to the critical role of the entrepreneur in the American economy, while providing the entrepreneurs of tomorrow with the tools and inspiration to fuel their future success,” Greif said.

“We are proud that an alumnus of Lloyd’s stature has established this outstanding center at the Marshall School,” said Dean Randolph W. Westerfield. “Lloyd Greif epitomizes the role of the modern, successful entrepreneur: always looking for new business opportunities to create value while, at the same time, encouraging the next wave of entrepreneurs to follow in his place.”

As an investment banker, Greif has completed a large variety of transactions, including international and domestic mergers and acquisitions, initial and secondary public offerings, private placement financings and leveraged and management buyouts.

In 1992, at age 36, he founded Greif & Co. to meet the corporate finance needs of middle market and emerging growth companies. Successfully positioning Greif & Co. as the “entrepreneur’s investment bank” in just six years, Greif has built his firm into the leading purveyor of merger and acquisition advisory services to medium-sized businesses based in the Western United States. In 1997, the firm completed nearly $1 billion in merger and acquisition and corporate financing transactions for entrepreneurially owned and operated companies.

Before forming his own company, Greif was vice chairman and managing director of investment banking for Sutro & Co. He is widely credited with turning Sutro into a regional investment banking force, increasing the firm’s corporate finance revenues more than tenfold during his tenure with the company and consistently ranking as the firm’s top producer. When elected vice chairman at age 34, Greif was the youngest person to hold that post in Sutro’s 140-year history.

Greif is a member of both the management committee and leadership council of the New Los Angeles Marketing Partnership formed by Los Angeles Mayor Richard J. Riordan and a member of the board of visitors of Loyola Law School, from which he graduated in 1984.

Greif and his wife, Renee, are the parents of three children. The couple’s past philanthropic activities include endowing the Renee and Lloyd Greif Computer Center for the Mirman School for Gifted Children in Los Angeles.