Blair W. Effron co-founded Centerview in 2006. Over a four-decade career, he has advised many of the world’s biggest companies on their most complex and consequential strategic matters. These have included some of the most high-profile mergers and acquisitions, select examples of which include:
TMT
- 21st Century Fox’s acquisition of Dow Jones, spinoff of its publishing assets and sale of major assets to Disney
- CBS’s merger with Viacom and Paramount Global’s merger with Skydance
- Disney’s combination of Hulu and its live-TV business with Fubo
- Endeavor Group’s sale to Silver Lake
- DreamWorks Animation’s sale to Comcast/NBCUniversal
- Sprint's merger with T-Mobile
- Time Warner Cable’s merger with Charter Communications
- Motorola’s deals including the spinoff of Motorola Mobility
Consumer/Retail
- H.J. Heinz and Kraft’s respective sales to form Kraft Heinz
- Tiffany’s sale to LVMH
- P&G’s merger of its beauty business with Coty and acquisition of Wella
- Lorillard’s four-way sale to Reynolds American and related divestiture to Imperial Tobacco
- BAT’s merger with Reynolds American
- InBev’s acquisition of Anheuser-Busch
- Diageo’s acquisition of a series of brands including Casamigos Spirits
- Nordstrom’s sale to the Nordstrom family and El Puerto de Liverpool
- PepsiCo’s series of deals in the past decade including the acquisitions of poppi, Siete Foods, Rockstar Energy and Pioneer Foods, investments in Instacart and Celsius and divestitures of Tropicana and Naked
Healthcare
- Henry Schein’s deals including the strategic investment by KKR and the spin off and merger of its animal-health business
- Cerner’s sale to Oracle
- Illumina’s spinoff of Grail
Financial
- Credit Suisse’s sale to UBS
- SVB Financial’s sale of SVB Securities and SVB Capital
- General Electric’s disposition of $200 billion of GE Capital assets
General Industrial
- Emerson’s acquisitions including AspenTech and divestitures including Climate Technologies throughout its multi-year transformation into an industrial-technology leader
- Honeywell’s portfolio transformation through deals including the separation of its automation and aerospace businesses
- GE’s acquisition of Alstom’s power-and-grid business
Energy
- GE’s merger of its oil-and-gas business with Baker Hughes
- Exxon’s acquisition of Pioneer
Mr. Effron has also successfully defended many of the biggest targets of public activism campaigns and proxy fights, representing, among others, McDonald’s, Starbucks, Disney, Illumina, PepsiCo, AT&T, Emerson, GE, Duke Energy, P&G, Honeywell, Fox and Heinz.
He began his career at Dillon, Read, where he worked for 10 years before it was merged into a series of successor firms culminating with UBS. At UBS, he held a number of senior roles including Group Vice Chairman and member of the Board of its Investment Bank, where he also sat on several management committees.
Mr. Effron sits on the boards of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Visions for Public Schools, where he is Co-Chair; the Partnership for New York City; and Princeton University. He is also on the Board of Trustees of the Council on Foreign Relations, where he is Vice Chairman, and the advisory board of the Hamilton Project, an economic-policy initiative affiliated with the Brookings Institution. He was a member of President Biden's Intelligence Advisory Board.
Mr. Effron holds a BA from Princeton and an MBA from Columbia Business School. He resides in New York with his wife, Cheryl, and has three children.