In a regression toward the mean after that brief, anomalous period, nailing down deals in the high-tech industry these days takes plenty of shoe leather. As the ranks of top tech companies have thinned, competition has intensified. Once again, the banker's mantra is service, with corporate executives seeking financial advisers who understand their company's needs and who can be counted on not only to offer counsel on a given transaction, but also on overall strategy.

Tech Confidential spoke to four bankers who fit this profile. See related chart: Young guns They hail from a range of banks -- boutiques, middle-market firms and banking powerhouses -- and each is laying the groundwork essential to keep the mandates rolling.

In an age when megamergers hog the headlines and success is measured in the league tables, this ability to nurture deals from the cradle is as undervalued as it is intangible. Seagate Technology Inc.'s $2 billion purchase last year of Maxtor Corp., for instance, took Morgan Stanley's Andrew Guevara Jr. three years to incubate. Others, like Jevan Anderson of middle-market bank RBC Capital Markets, work overtime to build the key relationships that enable them to compete with bulge-bracket firms.

As a whole, these bankers have all proved their mettle by flourishing amid a decidedly harsher tech M&A landscape.

Ivan Brockman
managing director, technology investment banking group
Citigroup Global Markets Inc.

Investment banking is built on closing the deal, so it is common for bankers to focus on a given transaction rather than a corporation's ongoing growth strategy. Not Ivan Brockman, his clients say.

"Ivan is a rare breed in the investment banking world," says Flextronics International Ltd. chief financial officer Tom Smach. "He understands the importance of establishing a long-term, trusting relationship and provides management with the advice that is in the best interest of the company first and foremost."

Brockman, 37, and his Citigroup Global Markets Inc. team advised the contract electronics manufacturer on its $3.6 billion cash-and-stock purchase of Solectron Corp. this year. The deal followed years of working with the company.

Citigroup lured Brockman in 2004 after he had worked five years at Goldman, Sachs & Co. as vice president in the firm's technology media and telecommunications investment banking group. Before that he spent a little over a year at Lazard Frères & Co. (now Lazard) and, previously, several years as an associate at law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati PC.

At Citi, Brockman heads the firm's global investment banking efforts in the enterprise systems and software sectors. Among recent deals, he served as bookrunner on VMware Inc.'s $1.1 billion initial public offering Aug. 14, a mandate that grew out of a relationship with VMware parent EMC Corp.; advised Agile Software Corp. in its $495 million sale to Oracle Corp. in May; represented Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. in January in the private equity firm's $700 million investment in Sun Microsystems Inc.; and advised IBM Corp. on its $1.6 billion acquisition of FileNet Inc. last year.

As tech advisory services are viewed as increasingly fungible, Brockman says his biggest challenge is, unsurprisingly, the people side of the business.

"Certainly, with clients, the longer you have a relationship with them, the closer the relationship is, and the more they see that you're a person of integrity who brings good ideas to the table," he says.

If Flextronics is any reflection of his work, Brockman, whom Smach describes as one of his company's "most trusted and valued business advisers," is putting this advice to use.

Andrew Guevara Jr.
managing director, head of West Coast technology investment banking
Morgan Stanley

Since joining Morgan Stanley in 1995, Andrew Guevara has chalked up a very impressive array of tombstones.

Among the big deals the 38-year-old has advised on is San­Disk Corp.'s $1.6 billion acquisition of MSystems Ltd. in July 2006, Seagate's $2 billion purchase of rival Maxtor in May 2006 and VeriSign Inc.'s $17 billion purchase of Network Solutions LLC in 2000.

Guevara also works the sell-side, representing Seagate in its $20 billion buyout by Silver Lake Partners, now Silver Lake, Texas Pacific Group, now TPG, and Veritas Software Corp., now part of Symantec Corp., in 2000.

Guevara is expert at grasping the nuances of a business and discerning the strategic path it should follow, says SanDisk chairman and CEO Eli Harari.

"You can count on one hand the number of investment bankers that I think are his caliber," Harari says.

Guevara and many of his colleagues became the "new generation" of Morgan Stanley tech bankers who stepped in after Frank Quattrone and his team departed for Deutsche Morgan Grenfell in 1996. Before his time at the firm, Guevara worked at Salomon Brothers and Bear, Stearns & Co.

Guevara says the climate in tech M&A has changed dramatically since his early days as a banker in Silicon Valley. "The most important ingredient for success was pretty much stamina and an ability to answer the phone and transact business," he says. "It's not so easy anymore."

Seagate's Maxtor acquisition is a case in point. The deal germinated for three years before being announced, he says, noting that it took a lot of on-again, off-again talks before an agreement was finally reached.

Guevara's work with Seagate, the world's largest disk-drive maker, gets kudos from its chief financial officer, Charles Pope. "He's intimately involved," the executive says. "He's very integral to the process both in terms of educating our board, helping us and recognizing any blind spots we might have relative to a transaction."

Jevan Anderson
director, technology investment banking
RBC Capital Markets

After seven years of advising mostly on sell-side tech deals at now-defunct Silicon Valley boutique SVB Alliant, Jevan Anderson decided to switch gears and in March 2006 joined RBC Capital Markets, a $70 billion market capitalization firm that offered him a chance to expand his banking repertoire.

"I felt like I needed more room to run," he says.

And run he did. In 2007, Anderson, 38, has advised on 10 deals, including a mandate representing Answers Corp. in its July purchase of Lexico Publishing Group LLC. One of his largest deals to date at RBC came last fall when he advised Avocent Corp. in its $476 million purchase of LanDesk Group Ltd.

Before SVB Alliant, Anderson worked in the office of the chairman at Howmet Corp., an aerospace manufacturing company now owned by Alcoa Inc. There he helped lead the company in a leveraged buyout in 1995 and an initial public offering two years later. Anderson has also worked as a consultant for PricewaterhouseCoopers in New York.

The banker says his strategy is simple: Be direct.

"Some bankers have a reputation for being the biggest hard-ass in the room," he says. "My style is a little different. I don't ever bend the truth, and I try to be very rational about what I'm asking in a deal."

Anderson likes working on midmarket transactions because "almost all the deals in the middle market are transformational," he says.

With a combination M.B.A. and science degree, Anderson says he can offer fresh perspectives and extensive negotiation experience.

His big challenge, he says, is in helping to build RBC's U.S. brand. Better known in Canadian M&A circles, RBC is considered a middle-market player in the U.S., so competition is fierce.

"If you have a firm that quite honestly doesn't have the logo or brand awareness of a Goldman Sachs, you need to work harder and be smarter -- to prove that you can compete with those guys."

Michael Butler
chairman and CEO
Cascadia Capital LLC

It takes guts, or reckless abandon, to leave a secure investment banking job in New York and form a boutique firm out West. But the dealmaking frenzy of 1999 spurred Michael Butler to do just that. He left his job at Lehman Brothers Inc. in Manhattan and moved his family to Seattle, his hometown, to co-found Cascadia Capital LLC.

"I thought there was a great opportunity in the Northwest, with the Internet coming into play, and the Northwest was woefully underbanked," he says.

His timing was terrible. "We had a good run for about six months before the bottom fell out," Butler says, alluding to the dot-com crash.

Cascadia Capital spent four lean years "kicking and fighting and scratching" for business, he says. Things began to pick up in 2004. Today the firm has blossomed into a rising middle-market specialist with 21 bankers and has more business than it can handle.

In 2005 Cascadia scored its biggest coup when it helped sell Lenel Systems International Inc. to United Technologies Corp., for $440 million. Lenel had been courted by larger banks, but Cascadia won the business by lavishing time and attention on the company.

Butler, 46, says his firm consciously offers clients access to "senior attention," and he spends much of his time nurturing relationships with venture capitalists and private equity firms, which makes Cascadia an attractive option for companies looking to raise capital. "A lot of the larger banks won't even deal with the companies we're dealing with," Butler says.