Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, Inc.
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| Corporation | |
| Industry | Investment services |
| Fate | Acquired |
| Successor | Credit Suisse First Boston (later Credit Suisse) |
| Founded | 1959 |
| Defunct | 2001 |
| Headquarters | New York, New York, U.S. |
| Products |
Financial Services Investment Banking |
Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette (DLJ) was a U.S. investment bank founded by William H. Donaldson, Richard Jenrette and Dan Lufkin in 1959. Its businesses included securities underwriting; sales and trading; investment and merchant banking; financial advisory services; investment research; venture capital; correspondent brokerage services; online, interactive brokerage services; and asset management.
The firm was headquartered at 277 Park Avenue in New York, New York and employed about 11,300 people as of July 2000. Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette was acquired in August 2000.
DLJ lives on as an acronym used by the acquiring company and its spin-off for several business units offering specialized financial services.
DLJ, (which was majority owned by The Equitable (now known as (AXA Financial), announced on August 30, 2000 that it was being acquired by Credit Suisse First Boston for $11.5 billion.
Credit Suisse continues to use the DLJ acronym for certain business units, in areas such as private equity, real estate capital, and merchant banking. DLJ Merchant Banking Partners, a private equity firm that focuses on leveraged buyouts, was spun off from Credit Suisse in March 2014. It continues to use the DLJ acronym.
Donaldson, Lufkin and Jenrette founded the firm on the principle that no one else on Wall Street was doing high quality independent corporate research. They centered the firm around this notion and became extremely profitable. As research became more of a commodity throughout the 1980s and 1990s they had since expanded into other businesses. One of them was a dominance in high yield fixed income securities, including a large number of junk bond deals. A major factor in DLJ's underwriting and trading success with these securities was facilitated by experts recruited from Drexel Burnham Lambert, during Drexel's decline in the late 1980s and its bankruptcy in 1990.
By 1997, the firm was ranked first in junk-bond underwriting (up from seventh in 1990).
Donaldson, Lufkin and Jenrette Securities, however, was not limited to junk-bonds. From 1990 to 1997, it grew substantially in the stock underwriting business, rising from 20th to 4th highest volume in the United States. And in the profitable business of advising corporations in acquisitions, DLJ ranked seventh in 1997.
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