Altman was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, and was raised in Boston as a Catholic. His father, a food broker, died when he was 10 years old, and his mother, a librarian, raised Altman and his brother as a single mother. He attended the Roxbury Latin School. He attended Georgetown University, where he met future President Bill Clinton, and earned a bachelor of arts degree in 1967. In 1969 he earned an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, but took time off in 1968 to work in Indiana organizing volunteers for Robert F. Kennedy's presidential campaign.
Career
Early career
After graduating from business school in 1969, Altman began working at Lehman Brothers, where he grew close to chairman Peter G. Peterson. In 1974, he was made general partner at the age of 28—the youngest in Lehman's history. He left Lehman in 1977 to serve as Assistant Secretary for Domestic Finance in the U.S. Treasury from 1977 to 1981 under President Jimmy Carter, for whom he had fundraised when Carter was Governor of Georgia, and campaigned for in 1976, as well as working on his transition team. As Assistant Secretary, Altman played a "role in negotiating the Federal Government's $1.5 billion bailout of the Chrysler Corporation." In 1981, he returned to Lehman Brothers, where he became the co-head of investment banking and served on the board of the company and the management committee. During the 1980s, he was a lecturer and adjunct professor at the Yale University School of Management. In 1987, Altman joined the Blackstone Group as vice-chairman and head of its mergers and acquisitions advisory business. During the Reagan-Bush years, he fundraised for Democratic politicians such as Vice President Walter F. Mondale, Massachusetts Governor Michael S. Dukakis, and Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton. He also advised two New York City Mayors, Ed Koch and David N. Dinkins.
Clinton administration
When Bill Clinton was elected in 1992, he urged U.S. Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen to take Altman on as his Deputy Secretary. He was confirmed in January 1993. Once on the job, Altman was viewed as "the favorite to succeed the 73-year-old Treasury Secretary," and he played a large role in some of the Clinton administration's biggest legislative victories, such as the passage of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 and the "approval of the North American Free Trade Agreement." He was associated with the moderate economic policies of the Clinton administration" and had a reputation as a "deficit hawk." However, he resigned in 1994 due to the fallout from his role in a record-keeping scandal connected to the Whitewater controversy. After nearly 15 hours of testimony in February 1993 before the House and Senate Banking Committees, he submitted his resignation in August 1994, saying that he hoped his resignation would "help to diminish the controversy." He was succeeded by Frank N. Newman, who was the Under Secretary for Domestic Finance at the time.
Return to private sector
In 1995, instead of returning to Blackstone, he co-founded Evercore, an "independent investment banking advisory firm" in New York City, and currently serves as its Chairman. By 2014, Evercore was "a major player," and its investment management arm had more than $14 billion in assets under management, with its investment banking advisory arm boasting $1.5 trillion in "announced transactions." Evercore advised General Motors through its bankruptcy, and was paid $46 million by GM pre-bankruptcy. However, when it asked for a $17.9 million "success fee," a U.S. bankruptcy trustee called the fees "staggering," "inordinately large," and "clearly the bounds of reasonableness" given that "Evercore had no success at finding a purchaser or funder for the Debtors." Politically, Altman continued to stay in the loop. He advised two presidential candidates—John Kerry in 2004, and Hillary Clinton in 2008. In 2010, President Barack Obama interviewed him as a potential candidate to replace Larry Summers as his National Economic Council director, a job that ultimately went to Gene Sperling.
His first marriage ended in divorce, and he remarried at age 35 to journalist Jurate Kazickas in 1981. The Rev. James N. English of Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Church in Washington, D.C. performed the marriage ceremony at the San Luis Rey Chapel at Cat Cay in the Bahamas. They adopted three children. In 1992, he collapsed while jogging in Central Park due to an irregular heartbeat. His hobbies include jogging, skiing, fly-fishing, and tennis.
