Brown Gibbons Lang & Company
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 | |
| BGL | |
| Company type | Private |
| Industry | Financial services |
| Founded | September 1989 |
| Founders |
|
| Headquarters | , |
Key people | Michael Gibbons (Senior managing director) |
| Products | Investment banking |
| Website | www |
Brown Gibbons Lang & Company (BGL) is an American middle market investment bank that is headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio.
In September 1989, Michael Gibbons started a private equity firm in Ohio with his friend Kevin Brown who was a wealthy architect. Just six weeks after founding it, Brown died in a powerboat racing accident during his pursuit of the world championship. Suddenly without a business partner or the capital provided by him, Gibbons had to quickly change strategy. As an experienced banker who previously worked at McDonald & Co., Gibbons started providing investment banking services to private and public corporations. Gibbons has stated he admired the partnership structure at McDonald & Co. and wanted to replicate that at BGL.[1][2]
In 1995, BGL opened a second office in Chicago which has become the firm's largest office. Scott Lang was the founder of the new office and would become BGL's CEO until his departure in 2007.[1][2][3]
In 2010 following the Great Recession, BGL management realized that M&A is very cyclical and therefore needed to diversify the business to fill in the gaps. As a result, BGL established a real estate investment banking group which handled projects such as the Pro Football Hall of Fame and the DoubleTree hotel in Youngstown.[1]
In 2014, BGL moved its headquarters to One Cleveland Center.[4]
BGL has since expanded into additional sectors such as industrials, environmental services, healthcare and consumer products. It has also opened additional offices across the United States including offices in Los Angeles and New York City in 2022.[1]
