Evercore Brand Guidelines: A 1995 Advisory Firm, Evercore ISI and an NYSE Listing

A 1995 bet on advice without conflicts.

Evercore was founded in New York in 1995. English Wikipedia names its founders as Roger Altman, David Offensend and Austin Beutner, and Evercore’s own website describes Altman as its founder and senior chairman. The idea, English Wikipedia says, was that clients would be served by an investment banking firm free of the conflicts of interest of large financial institutions.

Altman came to it from a long career on Wall Street and in government. Evercore’s leadership page says he began at Lehman Brothers, became a general partner there in 1974, served as an assistant secretary of the US Treasury, returned to Lehman as co-head of investment banking, joined The Blackstone Group in 1987 as head of its advisory business and later served as deputy secretary of the Treasury, before forming Evercore in 1995. In October 2026 Banking Dive still described him as Evercore’s founder and senior chairman.

The firm traded for more than two decades as Evercore Partners. English Wikipedia gives that as its name from 1995 to 2017, when it became Evercore Inc.; its Class A shares are listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker EVR. The company is headquartered in New York, and English Wikipedia counts 28 offices in 11 countries across North America, Europe, South America and Asia.

Its own overview describes Evercore as a global independent investment banking firm advising boards, management teams and shareholders on mergers and acquisitions, shareholder matters, restructurings and capital structure. It also helps clients raise public and private capital, offers equity research, sales and trading, and provides wealth and investment management for private clients.

Advice, research and a London arm.

In August 2011, English Wikipedia says, the firm completed its acquisition of Lexicon Partners, an independent advisory firm based in the United Kingdom. In October that year it announced a strategic alliance with Kotak Mahindra Capital for cross-border mergers and acquisitions between India and the United States, the United Kingdom and Mexico.

In August 2014 Evercore announced the acquisition of the International Strategy & Investment (ISI) Group; the deal closed that October and created Evercore ISI, offering macro and fundamental research with sales and trading, English Wikipedia says. In October 2026 Evercore said Evercore ISI had been ranked first among all firms on a weighted basis in the 2026 Extel All-America Research survey — the survey formerly run by Institutional Investor — for the fifth year running. The research arm also runs events for companies and investors: Evercore says its eleventh annual Utility CEO Conference was held in Scottsdale, Arizona, in January 2025, and its website lists corporate access and conferences as a business of their own within equities.

English Wikipedia lists among its advisory assignments work for DuPont on its merger with Dow Chemical, for Whole Foods Market on its sale to Amazon in 2017, for Takeda on its purchase of Shire in 2018 and for AstraZeneca on its acquisition of Alexion in 2020. The firm’s own transactions pages list current mandates by role, counterparty and status, marking each one as pending or closed.

There has also been a legal case. In April 2014, English Wikipedia says, a former Evercore banker pleaded guilty to insider trading in securities including Evercore’s own between 2010 and 2013; he had resigned from the firm earlier that year.

How independent banks present themselves.

Independent investment banks sell advice rather than balance sheets, and their public identities tend to reflect that. An advisory firm’s website usually leads with a name, a list of offices and a record of work. Most of the firms in this guide carry the surname of a founder or founding family, and the house name is typically set in a restrained serif or a plain sans with almost no ornament. The office list itself can run to dozens of cities on several continents.

The record of work is the centrepiece. Advisory firms publish transaction lists, the modern form of the printed “tombstone” notice, naming the client, the counterparty, the firm’s role and the year. Evercore’s transactions pages, for example, mark each mandate as pending or closed. In these guides the deals are named without their sums.

Around that record sit a handful of recurring page types: sector and coverage pages describing the industries and kinds of assignment a firm handles, such as mergers and acquisitions, restructuring, capital markets and private capital; team and leadership pages with partner biographies; and, at firms with research or asset management arms, research reports, outlooks and insights. Media pages often consist largely of announcements of senior hires by sector and city.

Careers pages complete the set: they describe training programmes, internships and the idea of partnership; Evercore, for one, calls talent its primary distinguishing asset. This guide sets out what can be checked about each firm — who founded it, how its ownership changed and how it presents itself today — and keeps each firm’s own claims attributed to it.

From a partnership name to a listed firm.

The firm’s present shape shows in how it organises itself. Evercore’s website groups its work into investment banking — strategic advisory, liability management and restructuring, capital markets advisory, and private capital advisory and fundraising — beside equities and wealth management. Its office list runs from New York, Chicago and Houston to São Paulo, Toronto, London, Frankfurt, Madrid, Paris and Stockholm, and to Dubai, Riyadh, Mumbai, Singapore, Hong Kong, Beijing, Seoul and Tokyo.

Leadership is changing too. On 18 October 2026 Evercore announced that its board had appointed two co-presidents for the first time, with effect from 1 January 2027, and that its chairman and chief executive had agreed to stay in post for at least three more years, Banking Dive reported the next day. The publication said the move appeared to set up a succession line, and quoted the founder, speaking to the Financial Times, as saying the firm had grown much bigger and broader and needed more management.

Evercore’s careers pages speak of an “ethos of partnership and teamwork.” The firm says junior hires work alongside senior bankers from the outset, describes a ten-week summer apprenticeship programme for students and calls talent its primary distinguishing asset. Its media pages are mostly announcements of senior hires by sector and city — healthcare bankers in London and New York, aerospace and defence bankers near Washington, D.C., and a senior banker in Frankfurt in 2026 — and of research rankings.

For a design guide, Evercore shows how a young firm can present itself through named assignments, research rankings and senior hires, under a name that is not a founder’s surname. Compare Lazard, the family firm founded in 1848, and Moelis & Company, another New York independent advisory firm. For this guide we use a deep green, a cream and a brass with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Evercore’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.