Phillip Ean Cohen is an Australian private equity investor. He was featured in Rainmaker by Anthony Bianco.

Biography

Cohen grew up in Melbourne

Melbourne

Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...

, Australia where he was a determined Australian Rules Football

Australian rules football

Australian rules football, officially known as Australian football, also called football, Aussie rules or footy is a sport played between two teams of 22 players on either...

 player. He started his career at Kuhn Loeb, and was tagged as a rising star in the Mergers department. After a stint at First Boston

First Boston

First Boston Corporation was a New York-based, bulge bracket, investment bank, founded in 1932 and acquired by Credit Suisse in 1990. Together with its sister investment banks, it was referred to as CS First Boston after 1993 and part of Credit Suisse First Boston after 1996, the First Boston part...

, he was recruited by Jeffery Beck to Oppenheimer & Co.'s Corporate advisory

Corporate advisory

Corporate advisory refers to the activity of advising organisations, including corporations, institutions and government bodies, on mergers and acquisitions and other transactions that involve a change in ownership of a company or business...

 department. Cohen was responsible for the group's first eleven transactions, making upwards of $20 million for the department as a 28 year old partner. Cohen was contributing nearly 60% of the department's revenue, yet his lack of respect to senior management made him ineligible for bonuses.

As a result, Cohen started taking a self imposed fee on his deals; other Opco employees called these fees "Cohen Commissions". Due to his productivity, Cohen's self-imposed commissions initially went unpunished, however eventually Jeff Beck was forced to fire him. With money from his side dealings, and advice from Ivan Boesky

Ivan Boesky

Ivan Frederick Boesky is an American stock trader who is notable for his prominent role in a Wall Street insider trading scandal that occurred in the United States in the mid-1980s.-Life and career:...

 and Michael Milken

Michael Milken

Michael Robert Milken is an American business magnate, financier, and philanthropist noted for his role in the development of the market for high-yield bonds during the 1970s and 1980s, for his 1990 guilty plea to felony charges for violating US securities laws, and for his funding of medical...

, Cohen started his own firm, Morgan Schiff & Co.

Morgan Schiff & Co.

Morgan Schiff & Co. was an investment house founded by Phillip Ean Cohen which was a prominent Mergers and Acquisitions and Private Equity firm from its founding in the mid 1980s to the late 1990s. The firm was discontinued after the bankruptcy of Friedman's Inc., the largest jewelry bankruptcy of...

. As of 2002, he lives in New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

.

Quotes

"With his tailored Savile Row suits, Oxford accent, and patronizing manner, Cohen seems like the quintessential Wall Street sophisticate- very polished, very international. In actuality, though, he is Australian, not English, and his diffidence masks an extreme aggressiveness" (BusinessWeek)