Brian Sterling

Brian Sterling is a former managing director in the financial services group at Piper Sandler. Sterling joined Piper Sandler in 2020 from Sandler O’Neill & Partners, L.P. in connection with the firms’ merger. While at Sandler O’Neill, Sterling served as a principal and co-head of investment banking, leading one of the largest and most experienced groups serving the financial services sector. He was responsible for advising banks, thrifts, trading firms and other financial institutions on strategic matters, focusing on mergers and acquisitions and financings.

Before joining Sandler O’Neill in 2002, Sterling was a managing director in the financial institutions group at Merrill Lynch & Co. from 1996 through 2001, serving as the senior investment banker responsible for providing relationship management and mergers and acquisitions services to large regional banks, finance companies and trading and technology companies. Prior to that, Sterling held several positions, including head of the financial institutions group, in the corporate finance department of Wertheim Schroder & Co. Incorporated from 1988 through 1996. Sterling began his career in 1985 as an associate in the mergers and acquisitions department of the law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.

Sterling currently serves on the board of trustees at Clara Maass Medical Center, an RWJ Barnabas Health facility, and on the Finance Committee of the RWJ Barnabas Health System. In addition, he is involved with two volunteer organizations focused on education, KIPP New Jersey, a charter school system; and New Jersey SEEDs, a non-profit that prepares motivated, high-achieving, low-income students for admission to private schools and colleges. Sterling is also chairman of the board of 70 Faces Media, a non-profit digital media company which is the largest and most diverse Jewish media organization in North America. In addition, Sterling has served on the board of the Yale Law School Fund.

Sterling holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a Juris doctorate from Yale Law School.