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James K. Sebenius

James K. Sebenius specializes in analyzing and advising on complex negotiations. He is the Gordon Donaldson Professorship of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.

On leave from Harvard for several years in New York, he was first hired by investment banker Peter G. Peterson as a full-time negotiation advisor, and then helped to found (as Vice President) the Blackstone Group, an investment banking and private equity firm. In its first year, Blackstone announced transactions valued at over $11 billion and advised over a dozen major corporate clients (including Squibb, American Can Company, American International Group, Inc., Armco Inc., COMSAT, CSX Corp., Eaton Corp., Firestone Tire and Rubber, Saatchi and Saatchi Company PLC, and Sony Corporation) on a wide variety of financial and strategic negotiations including mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, recapitalizations, and divestitures. Subsequently, Blackstone raised almost $1 billion in equity for Blackstone Capital Partners and has acted as primary financial advisor on three of the largest U.S.-Japanese deals to date.

Upon returning to Harvard, Sebenius continued to work as Special Advisor to the firm. Sebenius served from 1976 to 1977 as assistant to Robert White, Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Washington, and from 1977 to 1980 with the State Department on the U.S. Delegation to the Law of the Sea negotiations led by Elliot Richardson.

Sebenius is a founder and principal of Lax Sebenius: The Negotiation Group LLC, a firm that provides negotiation advisory services to corporations and governments worldwide. Private clients of the Negotiation Group have included large corporations such as American International Group, AT&T, Lederle Labs, Sandoz, Lucent Technologies, Glaxo, Banamex, GE, GTE, Hewlett Packard, Northwest Water PLC, Reuters, USWest, Time Warner, and Estée Lauder; financial firms such as the Blackstone Group, Charterhouse International, and Exeter Capital; small companies such as American Research and Development, Fusion Systems and Peak Health; as well as government agencies such as the National Science Foundation, the Foreign Ministry of Venezuela, and the Government of Indonesia.

Sebenius holds a Ph.D. from Harvard in business economics, an MA in Engineering-Economic Systems from Stanford's Engineering School, and a BA (summa cum laude) from Vanderbilt in mathematics and English.