History
Akin Bay was founded in 1990 by William A. Kaynor, John P. Carroll, Jr. and James B. Rybakoff, with the goal of providing superior, customized, client specific investment banking services to publicly held, private and family owned middle market companies. From our founding, the experience of Akin Bay’s founding Senior Partners, Mr. Kaynor and Mr. Carroll, has afforded us the competitive advantage of leveraging their 60 plus years (combined) of experience and the vast connections they both brought to Akin Bay at its founding to reach, and to sustain for 17 years, the client base and record of success we have achieved. Although Mr. Kaynor and Mr. Carroll have since retired from Akin Bay, their experience, philosophy and relationships are still in active use in every transaction at Akin Bay. Below is a brief overview of Akin Bay’s founding partners:
William A. Kaynor, Principal/ Co-Founder – Mr. Kaynor retired as an active partner in 1982 from Davis Polk & Wardwell, where he had practiced law since 1952 (as partner of the firm from 1961 and a Senior Partner from 1982-1988). Mr. Kaynor’s legal specialties included general corporate and corporate financial matters, securities law (including a very extensive investment company practice, particularly in unit investment trusts), real estate (including pioneering work in real estate investment trusts) and other corporate financial transactions for many of the firm’s major corporate clients: City Investing Company, General Motors, Bass Brothers Investments, GE, GMAC, Continental Oil, J.P. Morgan, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley (for which he worked on the original public offering of Apple Computer Inc.) and Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette. Mr. Kaynor served as a director of Americana Hotels & Realty Corporation, and Segue Software, Inc. (1989-1996). He is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School.
John P. Carroll, Jr., Chairman/ Co-Founder – Mr. Carroll retired in 1990 from Davis Polk & Wardwell, where he had practiced law since 1957 (as a partner of the firm from 1961 and a Senior Partner from 1982-1990). Mr. Carroll founded the London office of Davis Polk in 1973 and worked on a broad range of international financial matters, including the financing of the Forties Field in the British North Sea for British Petroleum. His legal specialty was federal income taxation. Mr. Carroll is a graduate of Cornell University and Harvard Law School.
James B. Rybakoff – President and CEO – For a full biography on Mr. Rybakoff please refer to Our Team.