Dec. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Greenhill & Co. managing directors Jeffrey F. Buckalew and Rakesh Chawla died yesterday aboard a single-engine plane that crashed on a New Jersey highway.
Buckalew’s wife, Corinne, and two children also were on the plane owned by Buckalew, an experienced pilot, according to a statement from New York-based advisory firm Greenhill. There were no survivors, New Jersey police said in a post on Twitter.
“The firm is in deep mourning over the tragic and untimely death of two of its esteemed colleagues and members of Jeff’s family,” Chairman Robert Greenhill and Chief Executive Officer Scott Bok said in the statement yesterday. “Jeff was one of the first employees of Greenhill. He and Rakesh were extraordinary professionals who were highly respected by colleagues and clients alike.”
Buckalew, 45, led Greenhill’s North American advisory activities. He started at the firm in 1996, the year it was founded, after working at Salomon Brothers, according to the company. Chawla, 36, was a managing director for the financial- services sector. He joined Greenhill in 2003 from Blackstone Group LP.
The men were traveling on business for Greenhill, said a person familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity because that detail hadn’t been made public.
The plane crashed on Interstate 287 in Harding, New Jersey, about 35 miles west of Manhattan, after taking off from Teterboro Airport, state police said on Twitter. The plane was en route to DeKalb-Peachtree Airport near Atlanta, according to flightaware.com. No one on the ground was killed, according to the New York Daily News, which quoted witnesses as saying the plane appeared to have broken up in flight.
Discussed Icing
A wing was found in a tree about a quarter-mile away, the Associated Press reported. The news service said the plane, a Socata TBM 700 single-engine turboprop, departed at 9:50 a.m. local time and crashed 14 minutes later after the pilot had discussed icing with flight controllers.
The Socata reached about 126 knots as it climbed and then slowed to 90 knots about 10 a.m., according to flight log data captured by flightaware.com. The plane’s stall speed is about 80 knots, meaning it might have gone into a spin or tumble and that the pilot’s efforts to recover may have overstressed the wing, said Bill Waldock, a professor of safety science at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s campus in Prescott, Arizona.
“Ice is going to be a factor they will look at and why it started slowing down,” Waldock said. “If the plane had much ice, that’s going to increase drag tremendously, further slowing the plane.”
Medical Exam
Buckalew received a private-pilot’s license in June 2010, which let him fly a single-engine airplane and use instruments for takeoff and landing, according to U.S. Federal Aviation Administration data. His last medical exam was in July, FAA records show.
The address listed on Buckalew’s FAA license was the same address listed for Cool Stream LLC, the registered owner of the Socata. The flight deck of the aircraft accommodates a pilot and one passenger, and the main cabin provides seating for as many as five, according to airliners.net.
There were 852 accidents in the U.S. involving personal aircraft during the first 10 months of this year, killing 279 people, according to a Dec. 1 report from the National Transportation Safety Board. There were 25 commercial aircraft accidents in the period, mostly involving turbulence and none of which caused fatalities or substantial damage, the report shows.
‘Wonderful Man’
Buckalew, who received a bachelor’s degree and master’s in business administration from the University of North Carolina, advised on transactions in various industries, including VF Corp.’s $1.97 billion purchase of Timberland Co., Bok said in an e-mailed statement.
“Jeff was a wonderful man,” Craig W. Ashmore, who leads M&A strategy for Emerson Electric Co., said in an e-mailed statement. “He was an exceptional banker who gave Emerson insightful advice, and he was even-tempered, thoughtful and just fun to be around.”
Buckalew often won the company’s annual summer golf outing, Bok said in the statement, and Golf Digest had named him among the top golfers in finance.
Chawla received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, Bok said in the statement. He helped to advise the U.S. Treasury Department on managing and disposing of the government’s majority stake in American International Group Inc., the New York-based insurer bailed out during the 2008 financial crisis, according to Bok.
Greenhill owns a plane used by employees for business travel and by Robert Greenhill and his family for business and personal travel, the firm said in a March regulatory filing. Greenhill personnel also use airplanes owned by the chairman for business travel, the filing shows.
--With assistance from Mary Jane Credeur in Atlanta and James Langford in New York. Editors: Rick Green, Peter Eichenbaum, Dan Reichl
To contact the reporter on this story: Laura Marcinek in New York at lmarcinek3@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: David Scheer at dscheer@bloomberg.net
