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Private Equity Briefcase

By Kelly Holman, IDD Magazine

August 19, 2009

Mergers: The Next Fall TV Drama?

Mike Puerto should have little trouble rounding up special advisors or ex-Wall Street bankers with a bent for acting for his new television debut project "M&A." But, whether he'll find a receptive audience is another question.

Who, you might ask, is Mike Puerto?

He's a New York cabby and ex-derivatives trader with big-time TV ambitions, according to the New York Post.

The tabloid reported that Puerto plans to launch a TV drama about the high stakes mergers and acquisitions business in November. The enterprising cabby is looking for media executives to back the show via an ad in his taxi cab.

Never mind that the M&A business has slowed dramatically or those aforementioned Wall Street investment bankers have become the nation's new public enemy No. 1.

Of course, the latter may explain why the taxi driver thinks America's TV viewers will be captivated by such a drama. The country likes a good villain, and there's little shortage of financial hucksters to base characters on. Moreover, the implosion of Lehman Brothers and mass layoffs in the financial community over the past year will leave Puerto with plenty of potential stars for his show.

But, how much the Twitter-using, American Idol-watching generation will embrace a show described "as Dallas meets Wall Street" or have any interest in learning financial terminology like Ebitda or purchase multiples is a big question mark. It may also help to explain why the screenwriter has yet to secure more interest in his show.

Still, one can hardly fault the Astoria, Queens-dwelling Puerto for trying. To the contrary, there's plenty of deal fodder from the 2005-2007 M&A boom years, too, for the former trader to base his show upon. Perhaps, he might even think about including a scene about some high-living private equity executive who hires rock stars to play a birthday party?

One thing is almost a given. If he can close that TV deal, there's still plenty of unemployed ex-bankers who might just tune in given that they're no longer tethered to their desks during prime time. That just might be the "green shoots" the "M&A" drama needs.

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Kelly Holman

Kelly Holman is the assistant managing editor at Investment Dealers' Digest, where he writes about private equity and leveraged finance. Prior to joining IDD, he reported on leveraged buyout transactions, private equity fundraising activity, corporate auctions, the middle market and credit markets as a senior writer for The Deal. Before joining The Deal in 2000, Holman was a reporter for PRWeek magazine, where he reported on financial services PR and investor relation activities, as well as international PR developments. He also assisted with Haymarket Media Group's US launch of the public relations trade magazine. Previous to PRWeek, Holman wrote about private equity for Private Equity Week and Buyouts and served as a contributor to IDD in the late 1990's. A Colorado transplant, Holman has called New York home for more than a decade. He received his B.A. in Mass Communications from the University of Colorado at Denver..

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