Top healthcare investment banker leaves Jefferies to start PE firm

After more than 22 years working on Wall Street, including nine years at Jefferies, Jon Santemma, a managing director and the bank’s global head of healthcare investment banking in New York, retired from banking last week to start a private equity firm. Jefferies confirmed his departure.

Santemma will become a founding partner of the new PE firm Regal Healthcare Capital Partners, which is focused on high-growth healthcare services companies. He will continue on as a consultant to Jefferies throughout 2018 to help out on selected transactions.

There will be no immediate changes to the current leadership structure of Jefferies’s global healthcare investment banking group, and the bank has not announced a replacement for him. Five MDs who are members of the Healthcare Leadership Committee will continue to run the healthcare IB business and pick up Santemma’s administrative responsibilities: Mike Gerardi and Dan Decelles, the global co-heads of healthcare services investment banking, as well as Tommy Erdei, Real Leclerc and Kevin Sheridan, the global co-heads of life sciences investment banking.

Santemma started his career as an M&A/corporate finance associate at Skadden Arps. He then became a director in the healthcare IB group at Citi. After four years there, he joined UBS, where he worked for more than a decade, rising to become an MD and the co-head of healthcare services investment banking. He made the move to Jefferies in 2009.

Last month, Nicholas Moore, formerly with Morgan Stanley and most recently a senior vice president at Jefferies, joined Stifel Financial as an MD in its healthcare investment banking team.

In addition, former Jefferies and UBS banker Thaddeus Davis is now an MD and the head of healthcare for North America at HSBC in New York.

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