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J. Christopher Flowers (born October 27, 1957) is a billionaire private equity investor and founder of J.C. Flowers & Co., an investment firm focused on on the financial services industry. Flowers started J.C. Flowers & Co. in 2001.

After graduating from Harvard University Flowers worked at Goldman Sachs for 20 years. Flowers, who was named partner in 1988, was a founder of Goldman's lucrative financial institutions merger practice in the late 1980s. Flowers was named partner the same year as Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein and former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain.^[1] Flowers retired from Goldman in 1998, one of fifteen members of the bank's executive committee to leave the bank prior to its 1998 initial public offering.^[2]

J.C. Flowers & Co.

In 2000 with Ripplewood Holdings, he bought Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan and renamed it Shinsei Bank.^[3] He is currently seeking to buy a third of Shinsei Bank after it was forced to write down $107m (€72m) in losses from the 2007 Subprime mortgage financial crisis.^[4]

Because of Flowers′ refusal to sell his 24% stake in Hypo Real Estate (HRE), the German parliament has passed (as of Apr. 2009) a temporary law allowing expropriation.^[5] The HRE would have been out of business for months without government financial aid of more than 100 billion Euros.

References

Private equity and venture capital investors Investment Strategy Buyout · Venture · Growth · Mezzanine · Secondaries History History of private equity and venture capital · Early history of private equity · Private equity in the 1980s · Private equity in the 1990s · Private equity in the 2000s Investor types Private equity investors · Venture capitalists · Corporate raiders