JPMorgan announced its newest class of managing directors earlier this week, elevating hundreds of employees across divisions to the firm’s highest title outside the C-suite.
The bank promoted 135 people in its global banking and markets, and two of the investment bankers made Business Insider’s Rising Stars of Wall Street list last October, which tracks some of the most impressive up-and-coming dealmakers and investors.
Here’s what they told us last year about their now even more distinguished careers.
Florian Plath
Florian Plath, who was 34 when he made Business Insider’s list, started at JPMorgan as an intern in the London office, and now works with leading technology clients in its mergers and acquisitions group. He’s advised on various multibillion-dollar transactions, including Altair’s $10.6 billion sale to Siemens, Maxim Integrated’s $29 billion all-stock merger with Analog Devices, and Broadcom’s $90 billion acquisition of VMware, one of the biggest tech acquisitions to date.
Plath said there’s a common thread between some of the biggest deals he’s worked on: teams must mobilize quickly and solve problems in a dynamic, fast-moving market.
Plath is from Germany and based in San Francisco, but has studied in Asia and lived in London. He said his international upbringing and experiences have “further sparked my interest in global markets.”
The newly minted managing director told Business Insider he’s an avid runner, enjoys golf and tennis, and believes sports keep him grounded in a high-pressure field.
“For me, it has always been a team sport,” he said of his job, “doing what’s right for our clients, the firm, and the employees.”
Jack Levendoski
Jack Levendoski is also a banker in JPMorgan’s mergers and acquisitions group, and similarly focuses on technology transactions. He’s worked on Twitter’s $44 billion sale to Elon Musk, the $21 billion merger of World Wrestling Entertainment and UFC, and Palo Alto Networks’ $25 billion acquisition of CyberArk.
Levendoski, who was 35 when he last talked to Business Insider, moved often growing up, partly because of his dad’s job in the oil and gas industry. He lived in Louisiana, London, Nigeria, Indonesia, and Australia, and said the experience helped him learn to adapt quickly and appreciate diverse viewpoints. He’s used that flexibility when advising on hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of deals.
Many of those deals had touched on AI when Levendoski last spoke to Business Insider. Being an early adopter of the technology has given him “quick answers to hard questions that perhaps before required significant research,” he said.
Levendoski joined JPMorgan in 2016, after starting his career as a facilities engineering project manager at Chevron. He’s keen to mentor others, just as people mentored him: “I saw the value that it created for me, and so I’ve tried to play that forward.”
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