CHICAGO - Montana-based D.A. Davidson & Co. has extended its reach into Iowa following the completion of its acquisition last weekend of Des Moines-based brokerage Ruan Securities Corp. and its 13-member team, which is primarily focused on municipals.
The agreement for D.A. Davidson to acquire the family-owned Ruan was announced in late January. Ruan will keep its name due to its local name recognition but will also be identified as a division of D.A. Davidson and folded into the 130-member, fixed-income capital markets group managed by Sam Doyle.
The 24-year-old Ruan Securities was the top underwriter last year of deals in Iowa based on number, and the second based on volume among senior managers, with $216 million managed in 105 deals representing 9.9% of market share. The firm ranked sixth among senior managers based on volume in 2007, underwriting 82 transactions totaling $125 million, according to Thomson Reuters.
"Ruan has a terrific reputation and we are excited to add their industry expertise and client relationships," said D.A. Davidson president Bill Johnstone. "Their work will complement Davidson's broad expertise in fixed-income financing, sales, and trading."
For Ruan, D.A. Davidson offers a broader platform, distribution capabilities, and capital.
"Their additional distribution capabilities should give Ruan Securities the ability to expand its business significantly, in Iowa and in surrounding states," said Chip Schultz, Ruan's director of public finance, who will serve as a branch manager for the Des Moines group.
The Iowa group is primarily focused on municipals in the general government, school, and utilities sectors. It includes three bankers and four sales professionals. The firm is looking to add another salesperson and a banker to the Iowa office.
Schultz started with the firm in 1999, left in 2000 to work as a financial adviser and returned in 2002. The brokerage was opened in 1985 by the Ruan family with a group of professionals that had worked in the bond department for another one of its companies, Bankers Trust of Iowa. The Ruan Cos. was started in 1932.
With the addition of Ruan, D.A. Davidson will now have eight offices in the Midwest and 56 across the country. There are public finance bankers in 13 of them. Municipal trading desks are run out of the Denver, Omaha, Seattle, Great Falls, and now Des Moines.
D.A. Davidson ranked 29th last year among senior managers nationally, leading $1.4 billion of debt in 192 deals, and 32nd in 2007 with $1.6 billion in 231 deals.
