INTERVIEW-Cowen CEO on the hunt for M&A boutique

By Joseph A. Giannone

NEW YORK, Aug 2 (Reuters) - Cowen Group Inc. (COWN.O), which posted mixed results in its first year as a publicly traded investment bank, is shopping for a merger adviser that can bolster its earnings, Chairman and Chief Executive Kim Fennebresque said in an interview.

It's been a bumpy ride since Cowen, an 89-year old New York firm, was spun off by French bank Societe Generale (SOGN.PA) in July last year. Revenue from private and public stock sales, which surged at the end of 2006, has slipped in recent months and dragged down Cowen's stock price.

Eager to find new streams of income, Cowen is recruiting money managers and pursuing merger advisers who can buttress its underwriting and trading businesses.

"We are actively looking at acquisitions of M&A advisers and have come very close on a number of them," said Fennebresque, who has led Cowen for nine years.

M&A boutiques have been a hot item in the past year. CIT Group (CIT.N) recently acquired Edgeview Partners, a North Carolina firm focused on buyout firms, while Jefferies Group (JEF.N) bought Putnam Lovell, a financial services boutique, and London-based LongAcre Partners.

Lazard (LAZ.N) last month agreed to by Chicago-based middle-markets boutique Goldsmith Agio Helms. Merrill Lynch MER.N in October bought energy boutique Petrie Parkman.

Cowen is a venerable firm in the early stages of a new life. After nearly 10 years as a unit of SocGen, Cowen reemerged as an independent bank free to pursue growth in a number of businesses.

Much of the first year, though, has been marked by a number of executive departures and volatile results that exposed Cowen's reliance on a few cyclical businesses: stock offerings, private placements and trading.

Fennebresque, who earlier in his career was a senior banker at First Boston, UBS and Lazard Freres, has made it clear he wants to diversify a business with a market value of about $227 million and lay the groundwork for future expansion.

((Editing by Phil Berlowitz; Reuters messaging: joseph.giannone.reuters.com@reuters.net;+1 646 223 6184)) Keywords: COWENGROUP/

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