SAN FRANCISCO - Wedbush Morgan Securities last week hired Bradford Thiel to manage its California municipal bond syndication desk.
Thiel will manage all of the firm's competitive and negotiated municipal bond underwriting in California. He will report to Steve Kelleher, manager of the firm's municipal bond department. Thiel was previously a managing director at Citi and head of the bank's Los Angeles trading desk.
"Adding Brad complements our strategy to fill the void created by the pullback of the Wall Street firms from Main Street's nuts-and-bolts infrastructure financing needs," said Doug Charchenko, head of fixed income at Wedbush Morgan.
Los Angeles-based Wedbush Morgan has added 24 public finance, underwriting, sales, and trading professionals in the past year, including its acquisition of Peacock, Hislop, Staley & Given in Phoenix.
The firm is expanding all across its West Coast base. Last year, it added bankers in Portland, Seattle, and Los Angeles, in addition to the Peacock Hislop deal. Wedbush Morgan had $2.3 billion of assets, no long-term debt, and $205 million of stockholder equity as of March 31, according to its unaudited financial statements.
"In California, we've added significant banking resources in the past year and a half, and we're starting to see the fruits of that," Charchenko said. "We're starting to see much more product flow come through our firm."
The firm created Thiel's post to help keep up with the growth. California underwriting duties were previously split between Kelleher, the municipal bond department head in San Francisco, and Cap Harlan, a trader and vice president in Solana Beach, Calif.
Thiel has been in the muni business for 26 years. He worked at Citi from 1997 until December 2008. Before that, he was with Shearson Lehman Hutton and City National Bank.
"We see this as an opportunity to really gain some really good resources that otherwise we might not be able to gain," Charchenko said, referring to opportunities created through the past year's financial crisis.
Having a dedicated California underwriter with Thiel's experience will free up Kelleher to manage the municipal bond department and let Harlan focus on retail trading, Charchenko said.
Wedbush Morgan this year ranks 47th nationwide as a senior manager, having underwritten 13 issues totaling $240 million, according to Thomson Reuters. Many of the deals were in California, where it has senior-managed six deals this year totaling $151.4 million.
The bulk of its work as a co-manager this year has also come in California, where it has helped manage seven issues, totaling $644.6 million. That is a subset of its 2009 national totals, through May 25, as a co-manager on 18 deals with a volume of $746.4 million.
Wedbush ranked 17th among senior underwriters in California in 2008, up from 24th in 2007. It ranked 58th nationally. The firm was senior underwriter on 30 long-term deals worth $344.3 million and co-manager on 24 deals totaling $916.5 million in 2008.
Wedbush Morgan was recently named senior manager for a $250 million note offering for Contra Costa County in the San Francisco Bay area. The deal is to come to market in late July or early August.
