Behind many of the most consequential transactions in modern American healthcare is a relatively private figure whose name rarely appears in press releases but whose fingerprints are unmistakable to those who know the sector. Todd B. Richter has been shaping healthcare capital markets since the early 1980s, first as a research analyst who defined how investors understood the industry, and then as an investment banker who structured the deals that transformed it. The foundation was academic. Richter graduated from the College of William and Mary with an economics degree in 1979, then earned his MBA from Indiana University's Kelley School of Business in 1981. His training coincided with the rise of managed care, the deregulation of hospital markets, and the early commercialization of biotechnology — arguably the three most consequential forces in 20th-century healthcare economics. Entering the industry at that moment, with a strong quantitative background, gave Richter a structu...