McCarthy Leaves Lehman for Massachusetts College

Former Lehman Brothers banker Chris McCarthy has joined Massachusetts’ Assumption College as executive vice president for finance and administration.

McCarthy, 54, worked until earlier this month as senior vice president at Lehman, where during six years he ran the tax-exempt money market origination business and also worked on higher education deals. Before Lehman, McCarthy was managing director for public finance at Merrill Lynch & Co. He began his career at Goldman, Sachs & Co. and worked there from 1975 until the end of 1994.

McCarthy assumed his new position last week at the Worcester-based school. His broad duties include overseeing the school’s budget, building and grounds, and the police and human resources departments.

“I was a public finance banker for 30 years and I enjoyed it very much,” McCarthy said. “It’s a lot more things than I had done as an investment banker, and that’s what makes it attractive and interesting.”

McCarthy said the extensive travel the job required became less attractive as the years went on, and that, coupled with his work on higher-education deals, made him think “perhaps a second career could be a lot of fun.”

A longtime friend and colleague hailed McCarthy’s work on the vanguard of public finance during his long career in the industry.

“I don’t think anyone knows the fixed-income business like him,” said Robert A. Hynote, a managing director at Lehman who also worked with McCarthy at Goldman, noting McCarthy’s early experience with variable-rate debt and other market efficiencies. “That he would choose this as his second act is great for him and great for Assumption.”

Assumption’s president, Thomas R. Plough, said in a statement that McCarthy brings to the job “a passion for higher education, outstanding financial experience, keen intelligence, and very strong interpersonal skills.”

Assumption is a Catholic liberal arts college with an undergraduate population of about 2,150 students predominantly from New England. The college issued bonds in 2000 and 2002 to help finance campus improvements such as a new science center. Standard & Poor’s rated Assumption’s Series 2000A revenue bonds AA as enhanced by Radian Asset Assurance.

Assumption has about $60 million of debt outstanding. The college has no near-term plans to issue more bonds, McCarthy said.

McCarthy received a bachelor’s degree in history from the College of the Holy Cross, also in Worcester, and received a master’s degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business.