John Lakian

John Lakian is a multi-millionaire businessman who ran for governor of Massachusetts in 1982 as a Republican, and later ran to be the party's nominee for senator from Massachusetts in 1994. The nomination went to Mitt Romney. Lakian served in Vietnam and was awarded two Bronze Stars one with a "V" for valor for combat operations.

Lakian is Founder and Board Chairman of the Fort Hill Group, Inc., an investment banking and venture capital firm based in New York City. He also has served as Chairman of Merchants Capital, a holding company created following the merger of the Merchants Bank of Boston and the money management firm Fort Hill Investors Management, Inc. (during his tenure at Fort Hill Investors between 1971 and 1984, the company had more than USD$500 million under management).

Lakian's defeat in 1982 has been attributed in part to accusations reported in "The Boston Globe" of misstatements concerning his education and service in Vietnam. Lakian sued "The Boston Globe" for libel and won a jury verdict. The verdict was later overturned.

In 1986, Lakian launched McKinley and Allsopp, a broker/dealer concern that provides investment-banking services to small and medium-sized businesses. His investment banking and venture-capital services have served a number of Wall Street firms, including Paine Webber, Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank and Solomon Smith Barney, among others. Lakian is a founding Fellow of the Biotechnology Study Center at New York University's School of Medicine, and served on the Board of Trustees of the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratories in Massachusetts. He also is a current or past board member of Mr. Coffee, Joseph A. Bank Clothiers, Peoples Department Stores, Apparel Marketing Corporation, FNEDC, Sheffield Medical Technologies, The Molloy Group and Standard Life of Indiana, among others. Lakian, who served as an Army Lieutenant in Vietnam, is a graduate of Boston University.

ources

* http://www.bostonphoenix.com/archive/features/00/04/13/TALKING_POLITICS.html
* http://www.quietcaresystems.com/management_john_lakian.htm
* http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1050493-2,00.html