Investment Firm Flourishes As Wall Street Collapses

Through the turbulent trials of Wall Street, Chicago's leading private investment firm, William Blair & Co., has managed to stay in the quiet eye of the storm. The firm avoided the siren call of mortgage-backed securities, completed several high profile mergers and acquisitions in the past year, and is hiring as its competitors lay off employees.

William Blair's vice chairman, E. David Coolidge III, says the company's strategy of sticking to its conservative path and putting clients' long term financial wellbeing ahead of any get-rich-quick securities helped to keep Blair prosperous while bigger firms went under.

"Many of our competitors borrowed quite a bit of money to hold lots of securities and make all sorts of investments," he said in an interview. "It really became a problem for them because they lost their ability to fund and their ability to continue to borrow that money and it caused a great deal of stress."

Since 1935, William Blair has provided asset management, underwriting, institutional sales and trading, and advice on mergers and acquisitions. At the end of 2007, the total assets of the firm were nearly $742 million.

Read the entire article here.