‘Guts, Heart, Brains’: Sandler O’Neill’s Journey Back From 9/11
Jimmy Dunne said his firm’s post-9/11 strategy was defiance.
(Bloomberg) -- To celebrate the $485 million sale of Sandler O’Neill & Partners LP, Jimmy Dunne bought all the duck ties available at the Brooks Brothers store across the street.
Sandler’s senior managing principal spent Tuesday morning fielding more than 1,000 congratulatory emails and handing out the stylish neckwear to colleagues with the occasional “atta boy.”
The deal with Piper Jaffray Cos. caps Dunne’s 18-year effort to rebuild Sandler after tragedy: 66 of its 171 partners and employees died in the Sept. 11 World Trade Center attacks, including co-founder Herman Sandler and Chris Quackenbush, the head of investment banking and Dunne’s best friend since childhood. Dunne’s “Quack ties” serve as both a celebration and memorial.
“We lost some of the greatest people that you could ever know,” Dunne said in a phone interview. “Since it was us that lived and not them, we had the responsibility to do everything we could to hopefully make them proud.”
Following the sale, Dunne will stay on as vice chairman and senior managing principal of financial services business for the new Piper Sandler Cos.
Dunne said his firm’s post-9/11 strategy was defiance. The terrorists would want them to retreat. So they’d be strong.
“What would Osama bin Laden like us to do? We would do the opposite,” he said. “I’m going to go forward, I’m going to get some men and women who think like me, and we’re going to rebuild.”
Crisis Meetings
At first, Dunne said he focused on eulogies and what crisis meetings he’d have to hold first thing in the morning. Eventually, the business stabilized.
“It used to be we got through the day, then we got through a week, then we got through a few months,” he said. Today, Sandler has more than 300 employees. It makes markets in 420 financial stocks and writes research on 320 companies.
“To be at Sandler, I would say you have to have guts, heart and brains -- and I want all three,” Dunne said. He praised colleagues and clients, including Brian Sterling and Emmett Daly, principals in the investment-banking group, and Scott LaRue, Piper Jaffray’s global co-head of investment banking and capital markets, who popped into the office sporting a Quack tie.
Saved His Life
In a video produced by the Golf Channel, Dunne credited Quackenbush with saving his life.
The two grew up together on Long Island, New York. They caddied and played golf. The pair won the Labor Day championship at Shinnecock Hills, the well-regarded course in Southampton, New York, in 2000. A year later, Dunne was slated to play a U.S. Golf Association Mid-Amateur qualifier the second week of September. A low-enough score and Dunne would get to fulfill his dream of playing in a USGA event.
Dunne signed up to play the round at Round Hill, in Connecticut, on Sept. 10. But Quackenbush convinced him to play at Bedford, New York, the next day instead for a better chance at breaking par.
Dunne said the last thing Herman Sandler told him was to concentrate on his game. Just qualify. Don’t bother calling into the firm’s World Trade Center office. He and Quackenbush would take care of everything. Nothing would happen that day anyway.
Nobody Luckier
Dunne was on the course when he heard about the planes flying into the Twin Towers.
“Not a day passes where they don’t cross my mind multiple times,” he said. “Every good thing that could ever happen to a person has happened to me. And quite honestly, I don’t know anyone that’s luckier than I am.”
Dunne said he didn’t play golf for years after 9/11. When he did, he marked his golf balls with a Q, for Quackenbush. In 2018, Dunne finally qualified for a USGA championship, the U.S. Senior Amateur.
After the neckties were handed out and the last “atta boy” shared, Dunne was slated to get back to business Tuesday. He was meeting clients. On the golf course.
To contact the reporter on this story: Lananh Nguyen in New York at lnguyen35@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Michael J. Moore at mmoore55@bloomberg.net, Bob Ivry, Daniel Taub
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