Scott Bok

Background

About Scott Bok

Scott Bok has spent nearly 40 years as an investment banker, focused primarily on advising clients on mergers and acquisitions (M&A). In addition, he was a partner in a private equity fund, was CEO of a SPAC (special purpose acquisition company), and served on numerous public and private boards in both the corporate and nonprofit sectors. After earning degrees from the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Arts and Sciences, Wharton School and Law School, he began his career as an M&A lawyer in New York at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. He then spent more than a decade at Morgan Stanley, serving as an M&A banker in its New York and London offices. In 1997, Bok moved to the independent advisory firm Greenhill & Co, then in its early days. He spent 27 years there, 16 of those as CEO, and in that time played central roles in the firm’s globalization, multiple acquisitions, a pioneering IPO, a leveraged recapitalization and ultimately its sale to the major global bank Mizuho. Alongside his Wall Street career, Bok has served in leadership roles in the nonprofit sector, including as board chair at the American Museum of Natural History, Prep for Prep, and the University of Pennsylvania. In the Penn role, in the fall of 2023, he found himself at the center of a crisis that played out like a corporate takeover battle and marked the start of a period of nationwide unrest unlike anything since the Vietnam War era. His new book, Surviving Wall Street: A Tale of Triumph, Tragedy and Survival (Wiley 2025), is both a memoir and an insider’s account of the evolution of the remarkable expansion and evolution of an industry that continued to shape our nation and our world.