Rice Financial Adds Bankers From Morgan Stanley, Citi

CHICAGO - Seeking to bolster its senior manager capabilities, New York-based Rice Financial Products last month added two public finance bankers to its ranks - former Morgan Stanley banker Faye Boatright, who will lead the firm's Northeast business, and former Citi banker Rodolfo Riverol.

Both joined Rice's New York office. Riverol previously worked at Citi as a director where he specialized in quantitative banking. He was hired as a senior vice president.

Boatright was previously an executive director at Morgan Stanley, where she had worked for the last three years as a general government and transportation banker with clients that extended to Washington, D.C., and Florida. Before that, she worked as a banker at Goldman, Sachs & Co. She was hired at Rice as a managing director and director of the Northeast business.

"The Northeast is an extremely important region for us and Faye will have significant responsibility for building our business here," said Rice chief financial officer Cristal Baron. "Both Faye and Rodolfo will add to our capabilities as a senior manager."

The firm - founded 15 years ago by Donald Rice Jr. - originally worked to build a significant swaps book before expanding its focus over the last few years to include building its bond underwriting business, especially as a senior manager. The firm employs about 12 bankers in its offices in New York City, Hoboken, Washington, Atlanta, Chicago, Columbus, Houston, Memphis, and Sacramento. Another six derivatives specialists work in the firm's overall fixed-income business.

Rice did not do any senior managed deals in 2006, but in 2007 it senior managed $284.8 million in nine issues, ranking 65th nationally, according to Thomson Reuters. The firm did $1.6 billion of business as a co-manager.

Last year Rice did $1.5 billion of work as a co-manager but its senior managed work dropped to $176.3 million in just two issues. Baron said the decline reflects the market turmoil of last fall and early winter in which a number of transactions were pushed back to this year. The firm did $676 million worth of work as a co-manager and $25 million as a senior manager nationally in the first quarter.

"We tend to work on small, complicated deals and some of our real-estate backed deals and deals with more challenging credit issues like charter schools were tabled. If not for the market turmoil, 2008 would have been a spectacular year for us," Baron said.

She said the public finance group is hoping to complete many of the stalled transactions this year, while adding that "there are still going to be challenges this year" that demand innovative structuring. "We have to be nimble and adapt to the changes in the market," she said.

Baron said while the market turmoil and balance sheet troubles at Wall Street firms have made veteran bankers like Riverol and Boatright available for smaller firms like Rice, they also could help counter the perception among issuers that larger deals must be senior managed by large firms with the strongest of capital bases.

"What's been made clear is you don't see firms underwriting transactions that are not going to clear the market," Baron said.

For reprint and licensing requests for this article, click here.
MORE FROM BOND BUYER