Blair Effron

Effron grew up in a Jewish family in Poughkeepsie, New York, son of James W. Effron, president of Effron Oil. Effron graduated with a BA in history from Princeton University in 1984 and an MBA from Columbia Business School in 1986. He began his career at Dillon, Read & Co. and would remain with the firm and its successors (Warburg Dillon Read, UBS Warburg and UBS Investment Bank) over the next 20 years. Effron received a brief mention as an associate at Dillon Read in the Barbarians at the Gate involved in the buyout of RJR Nabisco by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.

Effron began his career in investment banking in the early 1980s and built up a reputation as one of the leading bankers in the consumer products industry and for more than ten years since founding Centerview has been one of the industry's top generalist banker across several industries. At UBS, Effron was Group Vice Chairman of UBS AG and a member of the Board of UBS Investment Bank, where he also sat on several management committees. Effron's major coup came in 2005 when he advised Gillette on its $57 billion sale to Procter & Gamble, which was the largest mergers and acquisitions transaction of 2005. Among Effron's other major deals are:

General Electric's sale of $200B of financial assets.

Time Warner Cable on its $79 billion merger with Charter Communications.

21st Century Fox on $71.3 billion transactions with The Walt Disney Company.

Kraft Foods Group, Inc. on its $58 billion merger with Heinz

InBev's $52 billion acquisition of Anheuser-Busch

GE on the $32 billion combination of its oil & gas business with Baker Hughes.

H. J. Heinz Company's $28 billion sale to an investor consortium consisting of 3G Capital and Berkshire Hathaway

Lorillard's $27.4 billion sale to Reynolds American

Unilever's $24 billion acquisition of Bestfoods

PepsiCo's $21 billion acquisition of The Pepsi Bottling Group and PepsiAmericas

GE's $18 billion sale of remaining 49% interest in NBCUniversal to Comcast

GE's $13.5 billion pending acquisition of Alstom.

Diageo's $10 billion sale of Pillsbury to General Mills

The Hillshire Brands Company $8.6 billion sale to Tyson Foods.

Diageo's $8 billion purchase of Seagram's wine and spirits business

News Corporation's $6 billion acquisition of Dow Jones

PepsiCo's $5.4 billion acquisition of Wimm-Bill-Dann Foods

NewsCorp's separation of the company into 21st Century Fox and NewsCorp.

In July 2006, Effron co-founded Centerview Partners along with Robert Pruzan, formerly CEO of North America at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein and President of Wasserstein Perella & Co. Additional Centerview co-founders included Stephen Crawford, former co-president at Morgan Stanley, and Adam Chinn, a former partner at Wachtell Lipton. James M. Kilts, former CEO of Gillette, heads the firm's private equity fund.

Effron and his partners have maintained full ownership and consistent growth since founding the firm. In 2024, Centerview Partners ranked fourth among all banks for mergers and acquisitions revenue in the U.S.