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Forty Under 40

Forty Under 40 Hall of Fame: Scott Milleisen


PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARC ANTHONY

Scott 
Milleisen

Age: 39
League: JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Title: Managing director
Where born: Huntington, N.Y.
Education: Hamilton College (B.A., economics)
Family: Wife, Amanda; sons, Ethan (7), Jack (7) and Kyle (2)

Favorite way to unwind: Cocktails and dinner out with my wife.
Groups supported: Children’s hospitals at both Saint Barnabas and New York-Presbyterian.
Most thrilling/adventurous thing I’ve ever done: Zip-lining in Costa Rica.
Person in the industry I'd most like to meet: Paul Tagliabue.
If I could change jobs with anyone for a day, it would be: Jamie Dimon, CEO and chairman of JPMorgan Chase. I’d like to see his broad perspective of our company and the economy.
2015 will be a good year if: The world can defeat ISIS.
My fellow Forty Under 40 class members would be surprised to know that I: Have identical twin sons.

At JPMorgan Chase headquarters in New York City, there is a well-known chair on the second floor, residing amid several others near an elevator bank, across from some conference rooms and around the corner from the in-company Starbucks. Around once a month, CEO Jamie Dimon is known to plant himself in the cushioned comfort of the chair to observe his company flow by.

If Scott Milleisen could change jobs with anyone for a day, he would be sitting in that chair, with the light pouring in from outside the glass tower. Then, he explained, he’d gain a broader perspective of one of the globe’s biggest financial institutions (which is part of Dimon’s goal in taking his time in the chair).

Milleisen offers the story from a position that gives him a wide view in its own right — a broad perspective of sports debt and a leading role in setting the market.

Stationed in JPMorgan’s private bank, Milleisen has lending ties to 30 teams in the top four U.S. pro leagues, so almost 25 percent of all those clubs. And along with Bank of America, JPMorgan is the go-to lender in sports.

What sets the JPMorgan sports lending effort apart, Milleisen said, is that it has few layers of bureaucracy and can act quickly.

“We have a flat organization with a few decision-makers empowered to act,” Milleisen said. “In 2014, I became part of the operating committee in the private bank.”

{podcast}

SBJ Podcast:
Forty Under 40 editor Mark Mensheha and Executive Editor Abraham Madkour discuss this year's class, some of the more interesting stories in it and how the selection process works.

To illustrate his point, he underlined the bank’s loan to the Florida Panthers’ buyer in 2013, Vincent Viola. The time between when the bank was approached and when the loan closed was less than 45 days, Milleisen said.

“For people like Vinnie Viola, there is value in having a bilateral relationship: the borrower and one bank,” he said. “It was easy for him, like talking to just one person.”

And it’s not just the quickness, Milleisen said, but also the size of the balance sheet. JPMorgan can underwrite a loan and not have to syndicate it first. In other words, JPMorgan can dip into its coffers for the full amount and not need to bring in other lending institutions right away to share the risk.

One-on-one relationships long have been a staple in banking, but never more so in sports lending than today. That’s because as franchise values soar, forcing buyers to cut ever-bigger checks, the amount of debt leagues allow teams to carry has not kept pace.

“The gap is filled by owners borrowing personally, which hits our sweet spot,” Milleisen said. “Really wealthy people are long on assets but sometimes short on cash.” (Terry and Kim Pegula, for example, who last year bought the Buffalo Bills for $1.4 billion, turned to JPMorgan for a private loan. Milleisen declined to comment on the transaction, citing the privacy interests of his clients.)

A 17-year veteran of JPMorgan, Milleisen is content with the team-lending business, swatting away suggestions of overseas sports business as too far outside the bank’s expertise, and other areas (like minor leagues) as too small fry. So for the foreseeable future, Milleisen will be one of sports team owners’ top lenders — unless, of course, he ends up sitting in that cushy second-floor chair.

— Daniel Kaplan

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