Quick Facts
Biography
Euan Rellie is a New York-based, British investment banker and entrepreneur. He is co-founder (with Charles Maynard) and senior managing director of BDA Partners, a Manhattan-based, Asia-focused investment bank. Rellie, along with his wife Lucy Sykes, are often praised by magazines for their dress sense and style. They are known for their social presence in New York.
Early life and education
Rellie was born in the United Kingdom in 1968. His father was a senior British spy. After spending his early years in Kinshasa, Congo and Egypt, his family moved to Manhattan’s Upper East Side and later relocated to London. He joined Eton College where he studied History, Mathematics and Economics 1981-1986. After graduating from Eton, he attended Trinity College, University of Cambridge for a BA and MA in the field of History. In 1990, he was President of the Trinity College Union and President of the Trinity May Ball.
Career
After graduating from the University of Cambridge, Rellie joined the Schroders as a greduate in 1990, rising to manager in 1993. He worked at Schroders for six years, based in London, New York and Singapore. In 1995, he was Head of SE Asia Execution for Schroders Asia-Pacific Regional Advisory Group. In this role, he spent his time working across Asia. In 1996, he left Schroders and co-founded Business Development Asia LLC, an advisory firm, working for multinational clients who were seeking to invest in Asia. He became the senior managing director of the company.
In 2012, Rellie founded BDA Advisors, the broker-dealer arm of Business Development Asia. The same year he was called Dealmaker of the Year by The M&A Advisor. In 2014 he was named North American Investment Banker of the Year, and one of the Top 50 Global M&A Dealmakers by The Global M&A Network. In 2015, Business Development Asia was renamed BDA Partners. Rellie was called the Dealmaker of the Year again in 2016 by The M&A Advisor.
His clients have included AgFeed, Axa Private Equity, C.R. Bard, Dainippon Ink & Chemical, DuPont, Ecolab, The Gores Group, Hanjin, ICI, ICICI, Intel, Kraft Foods, Life Technologies, Lubrizol, Materion, Nalco, Pfizer, Philip Morris, Platinum Equity, Sara Lee, Sigma-Aldrich, Tenneco, ThomsonReuters, and Wockhardt.
He has advised on several Consumer & Luxury sector transactions and is known on social media as "#thefashionbanker".
Rellie also serves as the Chairman of Lucy Sykes New York, his wife’s business; on the committee of Soho House New York; and on the board of the West Village Nursery School.
In the media
The Character Euan Pierce from the 2001 American Sitcom Off Centre was based on Rellie. The show's producer Chris Weitz had lived with Rellie in West Village in the late 1990s. Rellie also lived with Toby Young, who made Rellie a character in his 2001 memoir How to Lose Friends and Alienate People. Writing about Rellie, Young wrote that "however famous an actress or beautiful a supermodel, he’ll ask them out to dinner. He’s incredibly flirtatious. My cousin sat next to him at a dinner once, and she said it was like sitting next to an octopus on crack."
Personal life
Rellie's previous girlfriends included writers Wendell Steavenson and Amanda Cutter, and historian Lucy Moore. Rellie married Lucy Sykes at Christ Church in Chelsea, London in May 2002, with a reception at Brooks's Club. They have two children together, Heathcliff Felix Alastair Euan Rellie born 2003, and Titus Jasper Jake Icarus Rellie born 2007. They live in the West Village of Manhattan and in Bridgehampton, NY.