Phil Olsen joined Financial Technology Partners, an investment bank focused exclusively on fintech, as managing director and fintech specialist.

Olsen has been a key figure in over 100 M&A and financing transactions over the last 15 plus years at William Blair (13 years) and Merrill Lynch (two years). Olsen will join the firm as the senior banker in the newly-formed Chicago office.

In addition, FT Partners won the 2016 Investment Bank of the Year award by the M&A Advisor after closing the $4.5 billion sale of Heartland to Global Payments, one of the largest fintech deals of the year.

“When I founded the firm 15 years ago, the firm’s mission was to build the investment bank that we’d want to hire if we were a fintech CEO – and that’s exactly what we’ve done,” said Steve McLaughlin, founder, CEO and managing partner of FT Partners. “Today, we are proud to double down on this vision with the addition of Phil Olson to further strengthen our team and add significant depth/domain expertise to our execution capabilities.”