Michael Jacobs is the founder and CEO of Jacobs Capital, LLC. The Research Triangle Park-based investment banking firm provides merger and acquisition and business valuation services to middle-market companies. 

He served as director of corporate finance at the U.S. Treasury Department from 1989-91, and was responsible for national policy in the areas of mergers and acquisitions, leveraged buyouts, corporate governance and certain banking matters.

He is the author of “Short-Term America” (Harvard Business School Press, 1991), which was named one of the 10 best business books of the year by the Los Angeles Times and received favorable reviews from The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, BusinessWeek, The Economist and other publications. 

He later published “Break the Wall Street Rule: Outperform the Stock Market by Investing as an Owner” (Addison Wesley, 1993). He has written articles on corporate finance and corporate governance that were published by The New York Times, Nikkei Business, Directors and Boards and CFO,  among others. He has appeared as the featured guest on CNBC’s “Smart Money,” CNN and PBS.

The California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS), named him as one of seven individuals who made the greatest contribution to corporate governance reform in 1993. He has served on the boards of several companies. 

He started his career as a consultant with Ernst & Young and as an investment banker with Robinson Humphrey, the largest M&A firm in the southeast at the time.  He subsequently started and ran the corporate finance practice for largest bank based in Atlanta (Citizens and Southern, now part of Bank of America); held a similar position for one of the largest consulting firms in the country (Kurt Salmon Associates); and served as managing director and head of the Southeast Region of Houlihan, Lokey, the largest middle market merger and acquisition adviser in the country and the nation’s premier business valuation firm. 

Mr. Jacobs received his MBA from Harvard Business School and his BSBA from UNC Kenan-Flagler.