Bio

Paul A. Talley is a Managing Director at DelMorgan & Co., based out of the company’s Santa Monica headquarters. Mr. Talley has more than 30 years of commercial experience operating technology companies, leading corporate finance mandates, providing strategic advisory services, leading investment banking practices, angel and institutional investing, and managing private equity funds. Mr. Talley has executed hundreds of engagements involving billions of dollars in transactions, all around the world. Mr. Talley is head of DelMorgan’s Security & Defense practice and focuses on the Technology sectors, with a particular specialty in telecommunications, software and networking. Mr. Talley has operated medical technology and healthcare businesses and provides financial services for these markets through a network of industry partners with deep sectoral knowledge. Mr. Talley began his career in law enforcement and is a United States Air Force veteran. In the 1990s, Mr. Talley founded a security technology company, and then went on to hold senior executive positions with technology businesses Pinkerton Corporation (systems integrator), DataWest Corporation (Internet software), Vigilos (security software), Gulfstream (systems integration), Zanbato (financial services software) and ViRural Group (Africa telecommunications mobile ISP). Mr. Talley began his investment banking career with Seattle-based Cascadia Capital in 2003, where he successful executed one of the most strategic security software transactions in decades, the sell-side representation of Lenel Systems International to United Technology. Mr. Talley went on to build the security and defense practice at Cascadia, where he and his team provided critical strategic and financial advisory services to the top industry players all around the globe. In 2006, Mayor Rudy Giuliani left the Mayor’s Office in New York City and had the opportunity to acquire Ernst & Young’s investment bank. The acquisition was completed, and the bank was re-branded Giuliani Capital, a “merchant bank” with an emphasis on security technology. Mr. Giuliani recruited Mr. Talley to move to New York and co-head the Security & Defense Practice and lead technology-related mandates. Mayor Giuliani began focusing on a political career, so Giuliani Capital’s Board of Directors made the decision to sell the investment bank and let Rudy focus on his campaign. Macquarie Bank (the Australian infrastructure bank) acquired Giuliani Capital in 2007, and post-acquisition Mr. Talley led Macquarie’s Technology practice in the TMET Group, and then later served as Head of Principal Investing, Americas for the Tech Investing Group. While in Private Equity, Mr. Talley initiated and then led the attempted acquisition of the listed multi-billion-dollar Monster.com by Australia’s Seek, an ASX-listed company. The Monster acquisition almost went hostile, but the prospective transaction was derailed when Lehman Brothers, the lead debt provider with multi-billion-dollar LBO term sheets, closed its doors in 2008. During the financial crisis of 2008, Mr. Talley decided to travel and work on turnarounds and startups, and he eventually found himself back in Silicon Valley building a financial services software company, Zanbato, one of the nation’s first Alternative Trading Systems (ATS) for unlisted equities. At Zanbato, Mr Taley, began working in emerging markets and in particular fell in love with Africa and her people. After Zanbato, Mr. Talley committed to five years of working on the ground in Africa. Mr. Talley worked in a political capacity, traveling on trade missions with the United States Secretary of State, serving on panels and committees, working as a Senior Advisor to the Department of State (USAID), and serving as a government advisor on commercial banking and financial infrastructure issues in emerging markets. Commercially, Mr. Talley worked to build a pan-African power and telecommunications infrastructure company, a mobile telecommunications company, an internet service provider and a commercial bank. In 2018, Mr. Talley was returning from a State Department trip to Mogadishu, Somalia when he learned he had contracted a very serious disease that plagued his neurological system. For the next 3 years, Mr. Talley was in and out of the hospital battling this disease, as well as malaria and other ailments one tends to accumulate in an emerging market. The neurological impacts to Mr. Talley were significant, and Mr. Talley was only able in 2021 to return to serving clients without obvious symptoms. With the understanding that a financial advisor should bring more value than simply transaction services, Mr. Talley applies a methodology called “Deep Sector Banking,” providing the advisory capacity to assist clients with relationships, sector knowledge, product knowledge, and a view of the competitive dynamic.