Advice

Take 10 with Doug Brown

Introducing Doug Brown, the head of healthcare investment banking at Raymond James. As a new member of the Raymond James team, Doug is very excited to build upon the foundational success of the healthcare group. Read on to learn more about Doug’s path to Raymond James and what keeps him motivated within the healthcare sector. 

1. You recently joined Raymond James as the head of healthcare. What attracted you to the platform?

I was attracted by the size, stability and history of growth at Raymond James. It was clear to me from my initial conversations with Jim Bunn, president of Global Equities and Investment Banking, that there was support from the top to invest in and grow the healthcare investment banking effort.

Additionally, there were several remarkably successful sector business units at the firm, which gave me confidence that we could achieve similar success in healthcare over time. It’s interesting – in 2021 the idea of ‘stability’ might have seemed out-dated or boring as the psychology of the market at the time was ‘grow at all costs.’

In 2021, Raymond James was growing, but not at all costs. Now in 2023, ‘stability’ is anything but boring and as we see competitors miss earnings, lay off bankers and generally retrench their overall effort, the stability of Raymond James allows us to take a contrarian position in continuing our growth. As an example, we have hired 14 senior bankers in healthcare in the last six months alone.

2. The healthcare group has expanded considerably, what excites you about the future of this team?

I am excited to see what all the talent we have assembled in this group can achieve together. We now have the critical mass to deliver tailored, sector specific advice to nearly all types of healthcare clients.
The healthcare GDP is $4 trillion – much too large to generalize as a banker. To be effective, you have to specialize, and we now have a full bench of very talented, experienced, sector specific senior bankers to cover the entirety of this massive market. When transaction volume returns to the level we have seen in previous active markets, I fully expect the Healthcare Group at Raymond James to advise on a significant share of the middle-market transactions.

3. Tell us a bit about your coverage space and what keeps you committed to the sector.

Over the course of my career, I have advised in many areas of healthcare services, life science services and some healthcare tech. The area where I have developed the most expertise is in the diagnostic services and technology sector, working with many of the leading companies in the industry - Quest, LabCorp Sonic, GE (when they owned Clarient), Eurofins and many private equity firms. While spending the strong majority of my career as an investment banker, I actually joined Raymond James from a client of mine in the oncology diagnostics sector who had hired me away from Leerink Partners at the end of 2019. The client was NeoGenomics and for a couple of years I led strategy and corporate development for the company. Diagnostic and laboratory testing have only grown in relevance due to the pandemic with the necessity of rapid covid laboratory testing. In addition, with the advancement of the technology around liquid biopsy (blood screening testing) for cancer, it is clear that the diagnostics sector will play a big role in the healthcare system going forward. My experience at NeoGenomics only further deepened my expertise and interest in the sector and I will continue to spend time in this sector while also leading the broader effort of coordinating our relationships and correspondence with private equity.

4. For junior bankers, how would you best describe the path to becoming a Managing Director?

To me, the path to any successful effort in life involves the concept of ownership. The best analysts, associates, vice presidents and directors I have ever worked with ‘own’ their work. The job is not just about completion of a task, it is about owning your work product and understanding it in the context of the project. The best junior bankers deliver on the basic task, then think about what it means and often come up with new ideas on how to add value beyond what was asked.

5. What has been the most impactful or surprising moment of your career?

When I was 21 and interviewing for an analyst position for an investment bank, I was talking the managing director through my resume, telling him about scores, grades and my major. He then responded with – you have told me about your quantitative scores, your interest in math, your interest in analytics and statistics and how you work on all of these strengths of yours – do you ever focus on your weaknesses?

It was a great question (to which I completely botched the answer) and one of the more surprising moments in my career. Unfortunately, I didn’t get that analyst position, but it definitely inspired me to be a more well-rounded person since that super Saturday in January 1991.

6. What has been your biggest career challenge, and how did you navigate your way through it?

My biggest career challenge was during the financial crisis of 2008. My practice was doing quite well yet my firm was literally going under. It was a very tenuous time, and the future was very unclear. I navigated it by finding a new firm that wanted to build out a middle-market healthcare effort.

I joined this new firm in March 2009 and took my best partner and very good friend Mike Drendel with me. It ended up being the best move of my career and Mike and I built a very successful office over a five-year period. Many of those bankers in that office, including Mike, work at Raymond James today.

7. Tell us about your pitch style. What is the Doug Brown way?

Any successful banker does the necessary prep work and strong analysis to demonstrate depth of understanding when pitching clients or prospects. In addition, I try to make sure the audience knows it is a team, group and firm effort to support their business and to deliver the optimal outcome. There are bankers out there who are very successful, who try to play ‘hero ball’ and make it about themselves, and I witnessed some of that first hand when I was a purchaser of investment banking services during my tenure running M&A and strategy at NeoGenomics. To me, presenting a broad team, supported by a Fortune 300 company is a winning strategy. And frankly, it’s more fulfilling and allows for more development of the franchise.

8. How do you see healthcare M&As performing in the current economic climate?

The areas currently performing the best are the high growth areas where the sharpest financing read does not drive the valuation of a business. Two areas – healthcare tech, where we have a great team, led by Reed Welch and Kevin Carpenter and value-based healthcare, led by Jeff Saxton, are both doing well in this challenging market.

We have several live mandates in these areas and investors are digging in. We are also seeing some green shoots in biotechnology, led by Brian Gleason and Stu Barich. We have been an active book runner on five transactions in the past few months.

Activity in traditional healthcare provider services still remains a bit dormant as valuations for those business are often driven by attractive debt capital – but we do expect to bring a few businesses in that sector to market in the second half of the calendar year. Bo Hinton and McNeill Wester, who just joined our group, have several mandates in provider services that they will be launching in the back half of the year.

9. What’s one piece of advice you’ve received in life that has stuck with you?

A mentor of mine at Smith Barney told me that the dialogue with a CEO should always start with M&A. Always think strategically – fees come in different flavors – but always start with M&A and pitch ideas to demonstrate you are thinking creatively about their business.

At that point in my career, I was in healthcare as a coverage officer but even in that role, I began to really focus on M&A. I still remember that very valuable advice.

10. Lastly, tell us three non-career related fun facts about yourself!

• One, I am huge Carolina Panthers fan and am very excited they’ve selected Bryce Young in this 2023 NFL Draft.
• Two, I have four kids (two boys and two girls), two dogs and a cat (my wife made us get ...), so we’ll be working for a while.
• Three, I would wager that I am the only employee out of 19,000 at Raymond James that has both a pickleball and a corn hole trophy sitting on their game room mantle!