Adrian Perica went to West Point, did some intelligence work, got an MBA from MIT, and made his way to Apple via his experience as an investment banker. He is now Apple’s head of M&A (mergers and acquisitions).

Perica doesn’t get a lot of press, but he played a significant role in the Beats acquisition.

Apple (AAPL) is arguably the most famous company in the world, but its top dealmaker prefers to stay in the shadows. Adrian Perica, a former Goldman Sachs (GS) banker, sometimes holds meetings with executives of companies he’s interested in buying at an unmarked building adjacent to Apple’s Silicon Valley headquarters, according to two people who have negotiated with Apple. Such precautions are warranted: A February report in the San Francisco Chronicle that Perica had hosted Tesla Motors (TSLA) co-founder Elon Musk at Apple’s main campus set off a frenzy of speculation that the iPhone maker was considering buying the carmaker.

Good profile from BusinessWeek.