Reader's Digest Fee for All

Maybe the best-known case of an individual banker advising a company on a deal occurred in 2005 when Wall Street wheeler-dealer Joseph Perella assisted UBS(UBS) in selling credit card giant MBNA to Bank of America(BAC) for $36 billion. MBNA's board tapped Perella a few months after he'd left Morgan Stanley(MWD) to go out on his own. Perella and MBNA never disclosed his fee.

The plum assignment no doubt helped Perella open his Perella Weinberg Partners investment-banking advisory boutique last June.

There's no indication that Lynch is going to use his unusual payday as a similar launching pad. GSC Group, where Lynch is a senior managing director, doesn't do any merger advisory work. The firm was started by former Goldman Sachs trader Alfred Eckert, and it specializes in investing in distressed bonds and lending to midsized businesses.

Eckert and Lynch are among five Goldman Sachs alums heading up GSC Group, which used to be called Greenwich Street Capital. The investment firm, which runs a number of distressed-debt hedge funds, initially was part of Primerica, the money-management firm that famed financier Sandy Weill used to cobble together Citigroup (C) in the mid-1990s.

For Lynch, the Reader's Digest payday will likely prove to be one-time event. But with merger and LBO market still going at full speed and Wall Street bankers always looking for greener pastures, it's likely Lynch will not be the last banker to fly solo on a deal.

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