Investment banker juggles big, fast-paced transactions.

When the robber meets the road for his morning commute at 6 a.m., investment banker Mark Lanigan is already talking.

It's a 30-minute drive from his home in Manhattan Beach to Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette Securities Corp.'s West Coast headquarters in Fox Plaza in Century City. "That's a half-hour wasted, unless I'm on the phone," says Lanigan, DLJ's managing director. "It's a great time to talk to clients on the East Coast."

Those chats are the first of 100 to 120 calls a day that Lanigan will either make or receive. The talking never stops - he eats lunch at his desk, generally eshewing business lunches.

"I find business meetings a lot more productive than business lunches," he says.

Lanigan is a busy man because DLJ in Los Angeles does a lot of transactions - more than 100 a year, estimates Lanigan, and it works on a whole lot more that don't come to fruition. Plus, there is advisory work. Clients are corporations or investment groups looking for financing, or companies to buy or sell.

As a managing director, Lanigan's mission in life is to create good deals for clients, and bring new clients to the brokerage. "My job is to generate new business," he says.

In addition, he must oversee the execution of deals, making sure that everything runs according to form.

Lanigan has his work cut out - DLJ has more than 100 investment bankers ensconced between the 30th and 34th floors of Fox Plaza. (The upper floor is shared with former President Ronald Reagan.)

It is the largest constellation of investment bankers outside New York, a result of the day in 1990 when investment house Drexel Burnham Lambert collapsed.

Under the leadership of Lanigan's boss, Ken Moelis, head of corporate finance nationwide for DLJ, the office has grown into national prominence.

Actually, Lanigan's day starts even before he gets in his car - he considers his morning breakfast ritual of reading the Wall Street Journal and the business section of The New York Times (while listening to CNBC, the television news channel), to be an essential prep for a work day.

"We spend our whole day watching the (financial) news. Twice a day, M&A (mergers and acquisitions) news is passed around the firm," says Lanigan.

The "M&A news" consists of clippings gleaned from newspapers or wire services such as Dow Jones. Bloomberg or Bridge News. A DLJ staffer brings the clips to Lanigan and several other senior bankers.

On a recent morning, Lanigan learned from a wire story that a certain publicly held company was "exploring strategic alternatives for enhancing shareholder value" - financial-speak for a company that is willing to be bought.

"The bad news was that we weren't the investment banking team retained by the company," Lanigan said. "The good news is that we have clients that might be able to acquire the company."

After reading the wire story, Lanigan immediately formed a strike team, which included some of his investment bankers in Los Angeles. and made a phone call to a New York-based analyst who specializes in the industry in question.

All relevant public documents on the target company, such as 10Ks, 10Qs and other filings, were downloaded from the Internet. An analysis of the costs and pro forma financials of a merger between the target company and DLJ's client company was worked up, and then fixed to the client.

"We show them financial models of what the merger would look like," Lanigan said. "And we want to be the first to show it to them."

He has to hurry - other investment bankers are doing the same thing, and likely even calling Lanigan's clients with proposals.

Lanigan operates in a ferociously competitive environment. The nation's capital markets have flowered in the 1990s, and there are huge pools of capital to be dispersed on any potential deal.

The big piles of money "enable" many buyers on any deal - and make rival investment bankers a force to be reckoned with, because any team can finance a transaction.

"If you ask me what I don't like about this business, it is the competition," says Lanigan, 37. "And the travel."

Indeed, another part of Lanigan's job, on any given day, is to meet with clients, potential or otherwise, no matter where they're located.

What impresses clients most? "Being prepared. Doing your homework. If you show them you understand their company and their industry, that's what they like." Lanigan said.

But that means more hours of work - for example, one recent evening Lanigan took home a pending S-1 filing (an initial registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission for an offering of stock) for a winery. "I read the executive summary," he said.

The pace in investment banking has grown more frenetic in the 1990s, mainly because of technological or business advances like overnight delivery services, fax machines and e-mail. "Today, everything needs to be done yesterday," Lanigan said. "It's the competition, it's the clients. The clients work in real time. They want things done, because their business demands it."

After arriving in the morning, Lanigan is usually greeted by a barrage of messages in phone mail and e-mail. By the time he has gotten through those, many more have come in.

Even as Lanigan talks, his multiple phones are making a variety of beeps, rings and buzzes. A deskside computer hooked to a modern adds to the cacophony, and occasionally flashes an on-screen message.

Sometimes Lanigan's role is more financier than dealmaker. At times, a call will come from an investment group that has a "done deal" - a company has agreed to be acquired, for example - but the deal needs committed financing within a constricted timeframe, such as 72 hours.

"I got a call a month ago from a financial sponsor (not a corporation, but an investment group that wanted to make an acquisition). They had agreed to a buyout. That was a Thursday," he recalls. "They needed a commitment on financing by the following Tuesday."

The investment group needed $800 million. A "SWAT team" of five investment bankers was assembled, backed up by several in-house number-crunchers.

A weekend was spent in the office. By Tuesday. DLJ had done its due diligence and was ready with the $800 million from DLJ's own bank and bridge loan funds, which are largely the firm's own capital.

Despite the frenetic pace of Lanigan's career, in the end he says he likes all the action, the phone calls, the meetings, the talking, the wheeling and dealing.

"What I like about this business is the variety," he said. "You have to initiate or react to a dozen situations a day, from talking to a client about a problem, or bringing a new idea or opportunity to a client, or knowing you can really make a difference in the life of a company."

As an example, he points to Colorado-based Corporate Express Inc., an office product supplier that had $100 million in revenues four years ago before becoming a DLJ client.

"They have extremely talented management, gifted. We worked with them for four years. advising and on acquisitions, and now they have $4 billion in revenues," Lanigan said. "They are now the nation's largest contract stationer - office furniture, paper, pencils. That's the kind of impact we can have."