A Goldman M&A Banker Helped Bring the Olympics to Los Angeles | Odd Lots
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We're in an era of megadeals, with Goldman Sachs reporting a record year for big deal volumes as companies scramble to compete with AI. Gene Sykes has seen multiple deal cycles come and go over his multi-decade career at the firm. The co-head of mergers and acquisitions has worked on famous transactions like Comcast's purchase of Universal and Disney's buyout of Pixar. In addition to being "the most-influential M&A banker you've never heard of," as New York magazine has put it, he has also spearheaded Los Angeles's successful bid to bring the Olympic Games to the city in 2028. In this conversation, recorded live at the Future Proof Festival in Huntington Beach, California, we discuss how a city pays for a big event like the Olympics, and parallels between the early 2000s TMT environment and now. Chapters: 00:00:00 - Introduction and Future Proof Conference 00:01:19 - Guest Introduction: Gene Sykes 00:02:47 - What Makes a Successful Olympics 00:03:40 - Scale of the Olympics vs. t
Tags: Gene Sykes, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Joe Weisenthal, Tracy Alloway
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