Baird Adds Two Public Finance Pros To Its Newly Opened Denver Office

Milwaukee-based Robert W. Baird & Co. has added two public finance professionals to its Denver office just one month after it opened, the firm announced.

Marcy Finley will join as a first vice president, while Yoon-Sook Moon will join as a vice president. They follow five professionals Baird hired from Wachovia Securities to open the office last month.

Finley comes to the firm with more than 25 years of experience, including work with Wachovia, A.G. Edwards, and Shearson Lehman Hutton. She will bring to Baird both her excellent quantitative skills and her ability to teach less experienced analysts, said Baird's head of public finance, Keith Kolb.

Moon will join Baird with more than 10 years of experience in public finance investment banking and derivatives with a number of firms, including Banc of America Securities LLC. Kolb also cited her strong quantitative skills and her work on pool financings, multiple-lien structures, and off-balance financings.

"As we continue to diversify both geographically and by products, we need to have really strong backup for our bankers on the analytical side," Kolb said. "These two, while they're located in Denver, I can see how they will not only help us in Denver - each of them will help us across the entire department."

The Denver public finance group has already been successful in getting hired on deals with issuers in such states as Colorado, Idaho, and New Mexico. The Denver group also will help boost the firm's national presence within the charter school and higher education sectors in addition to working on region-specific deals, according to Kolb.

He said the firm plans to continue growing its business. Baird recently added six sales professionals in Charlotte and two traders in New York.

"It's just overall, we're continuing to make investments in the business," Kolb said.

Baird ranks 11th as a senior manager this year, working on 208 deals with a par value of $2.3 billion, according to Thomson Reuters. Last year, it served as the senior manager on 337 deals with a par value of $4.4 billion.

The numbers mark a significant growth for Baird. In 2007, it ranked just 27th, working on 291 deals with a par value of $1.9 billion.

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