Henry Silverman Joins Guggenheim Partners

Guggenheim Partners, the upstart Wall Street firm, has hired Henry Silverman, the financier who serves as a director and vice chairman at the private equity giant Apollo Global Management.

Mr. Silverman has resigned from Apollo after just three years at the firm, where he served as a director and vice chairman. Apollo, which manages about $75 billion in assets, listed its shares on the New York Stock Exchange last year.

A spokesman for Apollo declined to comment on Mr. Silverman’s resignation.

At Guggenheim, Mr. Silverman will be vice chairman of the firm’s investment management business. Last month, Guggenheim entered into exclusive negotiations to acquire the bulk of Deutsche Bank‘s asset management business.

“Henry has a distinguished track record of recognizing business opportunities and building and leading companies to sustainable growth in a broad range of industries,” Todd Boehly, president of Guggenheim Partners, said in a statement. “I have no doubt Henry will bring strategic guidance and competitive drive to Guggenheim.”

An acquisition of Deutsche Bank’s business would add about $500 billion in assets to Guggenheim’s money management unit, which today oversees about $125 billion. Guggenheim first raised its profile in 2009 when it brought on Alan Schwartz, the former chief executive of Bear Stearns, as its executive chairman.

The firm has been aggressively pushing into new businesses and making splashy hires. Last year it brought on Herbert Lurie, former senior banker at Merrill Lynch who put together a number of large banking mergers during the late 1990s.

Mr. Silverman, 71, has spent a career working with some of the biggest names on Wall Street. He started working under Steve Ross, the former chief of Time Warner, and Saul Steinberg, the corporate raider. He is best known for building the 1990s-era conglomerate Cendant, which combined hotels, rental cars, a real estate brokerage firm and tax services into a corporate monolith. He eventually split up the company into four separate businesses.

In 2009, Mr. Silverman joined Apollo, which is run by his close friend, Leon Black. His move to Apollo was seen as an effort by the private equity firm to beef up its senior management ranks as it prepped its public listing and rapidly expanded into new businesses. In November 2010, Apollo hired Marc Spilker, a former senior executive at Goldman Sachs, as its president.

Separately, Mr. Silverman settled his three-year-old divorce dispute this month with his now ex-wife, Nancy Silverman. The divorce, which was closely followed by the New York gossip pages, was set to go to trial later this year. The terms of the settlement are unknown and under seal by the court.

At the center of the legal battle was how to divide Mr. Silverman’s $450 million fortune, an amount acknowledged in court papers. Mr. Silverman had argued that he deserved most of that money in part because of the “innate intellectual talents” and “unique personal traits” that he brought to the marriage. Ms. Silverman did not work outside the home during their 30-year marriage.

The judge in the case refused to admit evidence relating to Mr. Silverman’s intellect, writing that testimony “purporting to prove that the success of the business could be attributed solely to the husband’s innate genius” would not assist her in distributing the couple’s assets.