Business Career
Laffey had a stated goal of becoming the president of a financial firm by the time he was 40 years old. In June 1992, he began working for Morgan Keegan & Company, a Tennessee based brokerage firm with $500 Million in revenues and over 2,000 employees. He worked in various positions within the company including director of research, head of equity trading, head of institutional sales, and chair of two venture capital funds. In 2000, he was named President and Chief Operating Officer at the age of 38. He worked a total of 9 years for the company.
As President and COO, Laffey was responsible for a number of tasks including everything from administrative tasks to oversight of the company's private equity and institutional equity business. One company insider described him as being in charge of everything except bond trading and the Wall Street Journal cited him as the "sole decision maker" over picking stocks for the firm's focus list. He also served as the chairman of several investment committees and directly oversaw the firm's group of private equity investments and their analyst research branch. He left the company in 2001 after initiating and overseeing the sale of the firm to Regions Financial Corporation, a deal reported to be worth $789 Million. He was replaced by Doug Edwards; and, in additional to Edwards, Keegan hired three additional executives to assume the duties of Laffey.
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