James Christopher Flowers (b. October 27, 1957) is a private equity investor and investment manager focused on the financial services industry. He is the chairman of J. C. Flowers & Co.
Flowers was born in California and grew up in Wayland, Massachusetts. After graduating from Harvard University with a degree in applied mathematics, Flowers worked at Goldman Sachs for 20 years starting in March 1979, and was a founder of Goldman's lucrative financial institutions merger practice in the late 1980s. Flowers was named partner in 1988, the same year as Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein and former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain. Flowers retired from Goldman in 1998, one of fifteen members of the bank's executive committee to leave the bank prior to its 1998 initial public offering.