[Editor's note: A version of this story appeared in the January 2010 edition of Oil and Gas Investor. Subscribe to the magazine here.]

In April 2009, long-time energy banker Everardo Goyanes stepped down as president and chief executive of Boston-based Liberty Energy Holdings LLC, which invests in oil and gas exploration, development and acquisitions through direct working interests and private-equity investments.

He has a new role as chairman of Liberty Natural Resources, which has added mining investments to its portfolio. He still advises the upstream investment committee during its decision-making process.

The parent company is Liberty Mutual Group, a Boston-based, diversified global insurer and the sixth-largest property and casualty insurer in the U.S. In December 2008, Liberty Mutual had $104.3 billion in consolidated assets.

An economics and international finance graduate of Cornell, with an MBA from Babson Institute, Brooklyn-born Goyanes began his career at the old Chase Manhattan Bank at Rockefeller Center in 1967. He spent 10 years there, working with large multinational customers all over the world, and was the sole relationship manager for Exxon at that time.

Seeking a change of pace and less world travel, he moved to Denver in 1980 to become chief financial officer of Forest Oil Corp., one of the bank’s clients. “It seemed like a good idea at the time, and then prices went south. You remember the ’80s. We had to cut G&A in half. It was brutal.”

Goyanes returned to New York in 1989 to lead ING Capital’s new energy group started by Dutch bank and insurer ING. In its heyday in the 1990s, ING was one of only two or three entities providing mezzanine funding for oil and gas. Later, ING added most other kinds of financing for energy as well.

He joined Liberty in 2000 to help it begin nontraditional energy investing. “It’s been a lot of fun and we had exquisite timing,” he says. “We did not flip investments, we held them. And, we stayed close to the resource itself, close to the small-cap companies that we were building up. There are E&P guys we’ve been involved with through four iterations.

“We don’t have the same liquidity concerns as some others, so we can be extremely long-term players. That makes us a good partner to have, and people like that.” Liberty funded Petrohawk Energy Corp. and Energy Transfer Partners before they were public, and private E&P Laredo Energy, among others.

Oil and Gas Investor caught up with Goyanes in Houston where he was attending a board meeting of Plains All American Pipeline LP; he heads its audit committee.

Investor: Why the job change at Liberty?

Goyanes: There was a natural point of transition given the maturation of the oil and gas operation, so now I have more flexibility to do more of my fine-art black-and-white photography, see more of my family—and catch more fish!

Investor: There’s not a lot of oil and gas in Brooklyn.

Goyanes: It’s amazing where I’ve ended up. Exxon was the largest energy client in the Chase Manhattan branch where I worked at that time, and we did a lot of business with them. In 1974-’75, I moved out of Rockefeller Center and joined Chase’s head office petroleum department (in another branch) and started traveling the world.

Investor: You head the audit committee at Plains.

Goyanes: Yes, and it’s not a lot of fun. That’s hard work and it puts a target on your back. But our board works very hard and knows what’s going on, and Plains’ management tells us everything. That’s the answer to everything.

Investor: How has energy banking changed?

Goyanes: The ’70s were so far away from what we have today. Back then it was all new and we made it up as we went along. That was the time of the first nonrecourse project-finance loans. We had one Exxon project in Malaysia that took us five years to do. It was fun though.

Investor: Would you still recommend banking as a career for young people?

Goyanes: Yes. The whole concept of a free banking system allocating capital, while deciding what makes a good project, is the essence of capitalism. It has a practical value and a philosophical value. It can be hard work, but a lot of fun for young people.

Investor: What advice do you have for young bankers?

Goyanes: You can’t divorce yourself from whatever Washington is going to do. The other thing I’d say is, specialize in an industry; tie your finance knowledge to one specific industry. You’ve got to know finance, but just understanding money isn’t enough. The third thing I’d say is your reputation is everything: be honest, be fair. Try to strike a win-win deal. If both parties are winning, something good will happen. If not, something will go wrong. There are no secrets.

Comments