Early Career
After graduating from Stanford in 1979, Steve was hired as a staff accountant in the audit practice of Touche Ross &Co., one of the original “Big Eight” accounting firms. Mr. Luczo was the first non- accounting major hired by the firm to work in the audit group. During his first year, he was assigned to assist the City and County of San Francisco in transitioning to a new, then state of the art, mini computing system. During the transition, the City lost control over its cash and payables system, and Mr. Luczo was assigned to a 3 member special team appointed by Mayor Dianne Feinstein, to resolve the system issue, which had resulted in a $ 200 million discrepancy between the cash system and the payable system. The issue was resolved within 5 days and as a result, Luczo was offered the opportunity to lead system deployment at any of 5 major City Departments.
Mr. Luczo left Touch Ross in 1980 to pursue the system development and deployment at the Port of San Francisco, which was transitioning from a Sperry Univac 1005 to a Microdata Minicomputer. He was responsible for managing all systems and application architecture and development for the Port, reporting to the Chief Financial Officer. In late 1981 he was promoted to Acting Chief Financial Officer of the Port, and resigned in August 1982 to attend the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
After graduating from the Stanford GSB in 1984, Steve joined Salomon Brothers, Inc. He attended the 1984 Salomon Brothers training program (the year before Michael Lewis did as described in Liar's Poker and was hired into the Municipal Finance Department, and was based in San Francisco. Salomon Brothers was the leading underwriter of Municipal Bonds nationally as was the Firms West Coast office, under the leadership of Terry Atkinson. Mr. Luczo financed a wide variety of municipal projects including those for the Irvine Ranch Water District, the LA Department of Water and Power (“LADWOP”), the Metropolitan Water District of LA, the Orange County (“John Wayne”) Airport, the University of Arizona, the Central Arizona Water Project, the Sisters of Providence Health Care System, and the Santa Clara Water District. Mr. Luczo was involved with over 50 financings, which provided billions of dollars of funding for important infrastructure, educational and health care projects.
In 1989, while at Salomon Brothers, Luczo led the investment banking team for Seagate when it acquired the Imprimis Disk Drive Unit from Control Data. Subsequent to his advisory work for Seagate, Luczo advised Control Data in the formation of Ceridian and Control Data Systems.
Stephen Luczo was the Senior Managing Director of the Global Technology Group of Bear, Stearns & Co. Inc., an investment banking firm, from February 1992 to October 1993. Prior to joining Bear, Stearns & Co., he was an investment banker at Salomon Brothers, Inc. from 1984-1992. While at Salomon Brothers, Luczo led the investment banking team for Seagate when it acquired the Imprimis Disk Drive Unit from Control Data. Subsequent to his advisory work for Seagate, Luczo advised Control Data in the formation of Ceridian and Control Data Systems.
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