Steven LipinFounder and Chief Executive Officer

Steve Lipin is founder and chief executive officer of communications advisory firm Gladstone Place Partners and a trusted advisor in the field of strategic, financial and corporate governance communications. Steve has spent over 35 years at the intersection of the corporate world, Wall Street and the media, as a leading financial journalist and top communications strategist to C-Suites and boards of directors. Steve started Gladstone Place Partners in 2017 after 16 years at Brunswick Group, where he was U.S. Senior Partner. Steve also teaches an M&A class at Berkeley Law.

At Gladstone Place Partners, Steve has worked on assignments such as Take-Two Interactive’s $12.7 billion acquisition of Zynga, 3G Capital’s $7.1 billion acquisition of Hunter Douglas, Acceleron Pharma’s $11.5 billion sale to Merck, Dunkin Brands’ $11 billion sale to Inspire Brands, The Walt Disney Company’s acquisition of 21st Century Fox assets, Churchill IV’s combination with Lucid Motors, as well as others. Steve has worked on landmark M&A deals such as InBev’s acquisition of Anheuser-Busch, AB InBev’s acquisitions of Grupo Modelo and SAB Miller, Air Liquide’s purchase of Airgas, Marriott International’s acquisition of Starwood, Burger King’s combination with Tim Horton’s, American Airlines’ sale to US Airways, and many others.

He has also advised many companies on shareholder activism defense and shareholder engagements, including The Walt Disney Company, AT&T, Illumina, Duke Energy, Marriott, Heinz, PepsiCo, Yahoo!, Macy’s, AIG, Freeport-McMoRan and Arconic, among others.

Before his career in communications, Steve spent 17 years in financial journalism, 10 of which were at The Wall Street Journal. Steve was the Journal’s Finance Editor, supervising the paper’s coverage of mergers, commercial banking, private equity and corporate finance, after five years as the M&A beat reporter during which he was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. He joined the Journal in 1991 to cover banking after stints at Institutional Investor and American Banker.

Born in New York City, Steve graduated from Boston College with a bachelor’s degree in Economics. He is a board member of the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship in Economics and Business Journalism at Columbia Journalism School, the Columbia Journalism Review and of Youth INC. Steve has three children and lives in New York City with his wife.