Moelis & Company was founded in July 2007 by Wall Street veteran Ken Moelis and a number of his partners. The team sought to create a partnership that offered a better way of investment banking, with a focus on long-term client relationships.
Moelis & Company opened for business in New York and Los Angeles and immediately began advising clients on a number of large and complex transactions. These mandates led the firm to be a top 10 ranked M&A advisor in the U.S. in our first full year of operations. During this time, Moelis Capital Partners began raising capital for what would become a $1.9 billion private equity business.
Building on our early momentum, we added leading talent with diverse product and industry expertise and opened several offices, expanding globally into London, Sydney, Dubai, Hong Kong, Beijing and Frankfurt and adding regional capabilities in the U.S. via offices in Boston, Chicago and Houston. We developed new product offerings to meet the changing needs of our clients, and in 2008 we formed our Recapitalization & Restructuring Group, a team that is now ranked the No. 4 Restructuring Advisor globally1. We also launched our Capital Markets and Risk Advisory businesses and formed an Equities business in Australia. In order to offer our institutional clients additional investment solutions, we added to our asset management capabilities with the 2010 acquisition of Gracie Asset Management, a leading multi strategy credit manager.
Moelis & Company has won accolades for our client focus and innovation, including being named Most Innovative Boutique by The Banker in 2010 and 2011, Most Innovative Investment Bank for Asset and Liability Management by The Banker in 2011 and Best Global Independent Investment Bank by Euromoney Magazine in 2010. Today, we serve our clients with over 580 employees in eleven offices globally. We will continue to grow our firm opportunistically across products, sectors and geographies to deliver the most relevant advice and innovative solutions to our clients.