TheGrio’s 100: Bernard Beal, Wall Street mogul does well by doing good
TheGrio's 100 - After spending nine successful years in finance at Shearson Lehman Hutton, Beal founded one of the nation's premier investment banking boutiques...
After spending nine successful years in municipal and corporate finance at Shearson Lehman Hutton, Beal founded M. R. Beal & Company in 1988, the two initials named after his children and wife. Today, his firm is widely regarded as one of the nation’s premier investment banking boutiques, consistently ranking nationally among the top 20 underwriters of municipal bonds. Beal is also deeply involved with A Better Chance, the foundation that made it possible for him to attend the Wooster School in Connecticut as a promising teenager.
Bernard Beal is making history … landing the largest lead underwriting deal awarded to a minority-owned investment banking firm in the history of New York State. The Dormitory Authority of the State of New York (DASNY) selected his firm as senior manager and sole book runner for its $1.3 billion personal income tax bond issuance. The bonds will be used to finance educational facilities, economic development grants and to refund certain mental health bonds.
What’s next for Bernard?
Continuing to successfully operate at the helm of his investment firm, crafting landmark deals, and working towards “cracking the lucite ceiling,” he has often come across as one of the few black executives on Wall Street. His firm is also working with the District of Columbia to finance a portion of the New Communities Initiative, a plan to provide housing infrastructure, with a focus on public housing, and promoting social and community development.
In his own words …
“I wanted to go into municipal finance because it blended with my deep desire to do well and do good,” Beal told Black Enterprise in 2001. “I saw it as an opportunity to finance housing and health care.”
A favorite quote …
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.” – Theodore Roosevelt
A little-known fact …
M. R. Beal was named one of the ‘’big five’’ minority-owned investment banks in the 1980s by Gregory S. Bell, author of In the Black: A History of African Americans on Wall Street. Today, M. R. Beal is the only one that survives in its original form.
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