Stephen A Koffler

Lloyd Greif, one of Los Angeles' most aggressive young corporate deal makers, is stepping down as head of investment banking at Sutro & Co. to focus full time on deal production for the firm. Sutro is replacing Greif with Stephen A. Koffler, who headed Merrill Lynch & Co.'s emerging growth-company investment banking unit and who last spring engineered financier Roy Disney's $100-million investment in L.A. Gear Inc.

Stephen A. Koffler, 62, an investment banker who engineered the leveraged buyout of Jenny Craig Inc. and handled Roy Disney's financing of L.A. Gear Inc., died of cancer Friday in Los Angeles. Born in Providence, R.I., Koffler earned a doctorate in solid-state physics and material science engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. But he chose a career in finance, working on Wall Street and then moving to California as senior financial executive of Mattel Inc.

Stephen A. Koffler, 62, an investment banker who engineered the leveraged buyout of Jenny Craig Inc. and handled Roy Disney's financing of L.A. Gear Inc., died of cancer Friday in Los Angeles. Born in Providence, R.I., Koffler earned a doctorate in solid-state physics and material science engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. But he chose a career in finance, working on Wall Street and then moving to California as senior financial executive of Mattel Inc.

Lloyd Greif, one of Los Angeles' most aggressive young corporate deal makers, is stepping down as head of investment banking at Sutro & Co. to focus full time on deal production for the firm. Sutro is replacing Greif with Stephen A. Koffler, who headed Merrill Lynch & Co.'s emerging growth-company investment banking unit and who last spring engineered financier Roy Disney's $100-million investment in L.A. Gear Inc.

But they see benefits in his call for more generous depreciation writeoffs for equipment purchases, lower capital gains taxes, greater tax benefits for real estate purchases and his order for a 90-day moratorium on new federal regulations. Nonetheless, many small-business owners are taking a wait-and-see attitude toward Bush's proposals. "When my small-business clients call me and say, 'What's in it for me?'

Starving for profits, Jenny Craig Inc. said Monday that it has retained an investment banker to arrange a merger or sale of the nation's second-largest weight-loss company. Craig, which is still controlled by founders Jenny and Sid Craig, hired Koffler & Co. of Los Angeles to test the interest of health, fitness and food companies, businesses where there might be a natural fit with the diet chain's 650 centers. Shares of the La Jolla-based company rose 21 cents, or 15%, to close at $1.

Fresh from having accomplished the friendly buyouts of a handful of grocery chains and industrial concerns, the partners at Riordan, Freeman & Spogli found themselves earlier this year fighting for a different kind of business altogether. The quarry was JWT Group, parent of the giant J. Walter Thompson advertising agency and the Hill & Knowlton public relations firm. JWT was fighting for its life against Martin S.