J. Christopher Flowers

J. Christopher Flowers runs private equity firm J.C. Flowers & Co., which focuses on the financial services sector.Flowers studied math at Harvard and then joined Goldman Sachs in 1979, becoming a partner in 1988. He struck out on his own a decade later and in 2000 bought a beleaguered Japanese bank, Long Term Credit Bank, which had been nationalized in 1998. He resold the business to the public under the moniker Shinsei Bank in 2004; the partners reaped $2.3 billion.In 2008, he helped advise Bank of America and Merrill Lynch on their merger.