Betting on Yourself, with Lloyd Greif

In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Lloyd Greif. After a decade-long investment banking career at Sutro & Co. Incorporated, Lloyd left to start his own boutique investment bank, Greif & Co. Some people would be skittish to make this leap. Not Lloyd. As he tells us, he was a top producer firm wide, and as the leading rainmaker within the organization, he was routinely generating 40% to 60% of the total revenue for their division. Lloyd had the relationships, contacts and chutzpah to know that that success he had at Sutro would carry over, even if he was starting Greif & Co. during a recession. Lloyd’s extreme work ethic is legendary, and he had no doubts that he would pull off the new venture.

Lloyd is a highly accomplished investment banker of four decades’ standing. The fact that he routinely lectures on negotiations at all three of his alma maters – UCLA, USC and Loyola – speaks to his knowledge and expertise. He exclusively represents entrepreneurially owned and operated middle market companies, hence Greif & Co.’s reputation as “The Entrepreneur’s Investment Bank.” Lloyd is a zealot for his clients, always putting their interests first, religiously avoiding conflicts of interest, and going to the mat for them. He is also renowned for getting tough, extremely complex deals done no matter the obstacles. A proven successful economic cycle rider, Lloyd founded his eponymous firm during the recession of the early 1990s and has persevered through three other economic downturns.

The son of Holocaust survivors, Lloyd grew up in a one-bedroom apartment that he shared with his mother and older brother. Lloyd worked full-time to pay his way through school, earning three degrees—in Economics (BA―UCLA), Entrepreneurship (MBA―USC, Beta Gamma Sigma), and Law (JD―Loyola Law School, Order of the Coif). Running the midnight-to-9am store stocking crew at Ralphs Grocery Co. before going to school was not an infrequent occurrence for him. Lloyd founded Greif & Co. in 1992 following a successful, decade-long investment banking career as Vice Chairman of Sutro & Co., the oldest investment banking firm in the West, where he was head of the investment banking division and a member of the five-person Management Committee that ran the firm. Previously, Lloyd was a business operations and strategy consultant with Touche, Ross & Co. (Deloitte Consulting LLC).

In 1997, Lloyd founded the Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at USC’s Marshall School of Business. The Greif Entrepreneurship Center is consistently ranked among the top 10 entrepreneurial studies centers in the world. Lloyd is past chair of the Board of Directors of the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation and the Los Angeles Police Foundation, a member of the Board of Directors of the California Chamber of Commerce, a member of the Board of Leaders of the USC Marshall School of Business, a member of both the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO) and World Presidents’ Organization (WPO), a member of the Board of Overseers of Loyola Law School, past member of the Board of Trustees and Treasurer of the Florence Academy of Art, and a member of the Board of Advisors of the National Museum of American Illustration.

In 2002, Lloyd received the Entrepreneurial Spirit Award from the Boy Scouts of America, in 2000 received the Corporate Excellence Award from Loyola Law School, in 1999 and 2012 received commendations from the City of Los Angeles for his “dedication and outstanding contributions to the Los Angeles community,” and in 2019 received the Alumni Service Award from the University of Southern California. A frequent public speaker, he is an internationally recognized authority in the field of mergers & acquisitions and corporate finance and has been featured in such books as The Entrepreneurial Journey, Strategies for Small Business Success, The Entrepreneurship Movement and the University, Loyola Law School: A Sense of Purpose and A Sense of Mission, and The Development of University-Based Entrepreneurship Ecosystems. Lloyd also served as technical advisor for the novel The Street and has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Business Week, Forbes, Fortune, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and the Financial Times. He is admitted to practice law in the State of California.

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