He was also a partner of Cogan, Berlind, Weill & Levitt an investment banking and brokerage firm that would be instrumental in the consolidation of the financial services industry in the 1970s.
Among Cogan's partners at CBWL were Sandy Weill, later chairman and CEO of Citigroup, Arthur Levitt, later the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission and Roger Berlind a noted Broadway producer and long-time member of the board of Lehman Brothers.
In August 1973, Marshall Cogan left the firm after disputes with his fellow partners to focus on leveraged buyouts.
Cogan's first deal was the takeover of General Felt Industries (GFI) in 1974 which he completed with fellow investment banker Stephen Swid.
[4] Cogan was unsuccessful in his high profile bids to acquire the Boston Red Sox, Sotheby's[5][6] and L.F. Rothschild in the buyout boom of the 1980s.
[10] Under Cogan, United Auto was a leading acquirer, consolidator and operator of automobile and truck dealership franchises.
His theory was that Mr. Cogan had treated Trace as a personal holding company (which it was), and had improperly taken money out of Trace in the form of unduly high salary, salaries to his wife and payments to his daughter, loans to Mr. Cogan, his wife and others that had not been repaid and other expenditures for what the Trustee characterized as primarily personal purposes.
The court also rejected claims by Mr. Cogan that he was entitled to substantial offsets against his obligation to repay the loans he had received from Trace.
In 2005, the decision of the District Court was reversed on appeal on the basis that the judge had improperly failed to submit the case to a jury.