Jeffrey Rowbottom, a managing director at Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, was greeting guests Tuesday evening at a charity event at the Sea Grill in Rockefeller Center, when one issued a challenge.
“If you give what I consider an acceptable speech, I will put $5,000 in the fund,” said Daniel Toscano, who runs Morgan Stanley’s leveraged and acquisition finance group.
The money would support melanoma research, a cause that attracted a star-studded Wall Street crowd to Rockefeller Plaza’s garden on Tuesday for the Leveraged Finance Fights Melanoma benefit.
The event, whose chairmen were Mr. Rowbottom and Brendan Dillon, an executive at UBS, raised more than $1.2 million, surpassing the $925,000 raised in the inaugural gathering last year. Tickets were $300 each, and guests were encouraged to bid in a silent auction.
A group of well-known figures in the world of finance — Henry R. Kravis, the co-founder of K.K.R.; Leon D. Black, the head of Apollo Global Management; Howard S. Marks, chairman of Oaktree Capital Management; and Richard I. Beattie, senior chairman of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett — stood in a row before the crowd to speak about the Melanoma Research Alliance, the beneficiary of the event.
That organization was started by Mr. Black and his wife, Debra, after she received a diagnosis of melanoma in 2007. The skin cancer was successfully treated.
Doctors mingled with finance types in the summery air on Tuesday, chatting about markets and the best way to prevent melanoma (get regular skin examinations). Paul Kwasniewski, a Vietnam veteran who said he developed melanoma after spending too much time in the sun, said he received 16 stitches when the cancer was removed.
Some of the most prominent guests, including Mr. Kravis, left early. The Museum of Modern Art, of which Mr. Kravis’s wife, Marie-Josée, is president, had a party the same evening.
Waiters at Rockefeller Plaza carried trays of pork sliders, mini lobster rolls and sesame chicken skewers, while guests inspected the items up for auction, including facial radiance pads, an eco-friendly umbrella, a UPF shade hat and a golf shag bag.
Donald G. Drapkin, a former lawyer with Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom, was accompanied by the socialite Lauren Vernon. Mr. Drapkin, the chairman of the hedge fund Casablanca Capital, said buoyant stocks posed a challenge.
“With the price of stock in this market, it’s hard to be an activist investor,” he said.
“That’s why so many hedge funds are underperforming the market,” he added. “People are underinvested.”
Michael Milken, the former financier who assisted in the founding of the Melanoma Research Alliance, could not make it on Tuesday, but he appeared in a video from his office in Los Angeles.
When Mr. Rowbottom, K.K.R.’s head of capital markets for the Americas, took the microphone to address the crowd, his remarks seemed inspired, in part, by the challenge from Mr. Toscano.
“If you’re like Dan Toscano from Morgan Stanley, who came here with a sunburn, please don’t do that for next year’s event,” he said.
Did the speech merit a $5,000 donation?
Mr. Toscano said later that he was planning to give the money in any case. He added that he couldn’t hear much of Mr. Rowbottom’s speech.
“But I did hear him make fun of me,” Mr. Toscano said. “But no one laughed.”