Siebert Brandford Shank Adds Two Public Finance Managing Directors

Siebert Brandford Shank & Co., the New York-based minority-owned underwriter that broke into the top 10 earlier this year, added two new managing directors this week to its public finance team.

Fast-growing Siebert has named Donald Beier, a 27-year industry veteran, as managing director of institutional sales. It also hired Andrew Gurley Jr. as a managing director and underwriter. Both will work to manage growth of the firm’s sales and underwriting department in its Wall Street office.

“The addition of these professionals complements the talents of our already-strong sales and trading team to ensure our continued success and growth in market share,” said Suzanne Shank, the firm’s president and chief executive officer. “The ability to attract talented professionals of this caliber further demonstrates our increasing presence in the municipal finance arena.”

Beier, who Shank described as a “star salesman,” last worked at Loop Capital Markets, where he was managing director from 2003 to mid-October. He previously was vice president of institutional sales at Morgan Stanley for three years.

Beier’s career in public finance began at Paine Webber in 1983 after he earned an MBA in finance from Fairleigh Dickinson University.

Gurley was most recently a senior vice president in municipal underwriting for First Southwest Co., where he worked for the last 16 months in its New York office. Before that, he worked at UBS for 20 years in municipal underwriting, where he focused on pricing deals for the Northeast.

Gurley’s career in public finance began in 1985 at Matthews & Wright.

“With the growing volume, we needed to have a full-time, experienced underwriter in New York,” Shank said, noting that Gurley fit the bill.

Siebert, which works solely in public finance, now employs 75 people, including 38 bankers and 20 sales and trading employees.

The firm has been senior manager on 46 deals so far this year totaling $6.45 billion, which ranks it 11th, according to Thomson Reuters. That is nearly double the $3.25 billion it led in 2008 and marks a 10% gain from the $5.87 billion it managed last year.

Shank said Siebert hopes to place among the top 10 underwriters in 2010, which she said would be historic.

“We came into the top 10, we want to be a top 10 player, and we want to stay in the top 10,” she said.

A range of big deals on the forward-looking calendar could transform that full-year aspiration into reality.

Siebert led 37 negotiated deals in the first three quarters and was the only top-10 underwriter to be senior manager on fewer than 100 issues. Its average deal size among negotiated sales during the nine months was $144.3 million, second only to Goldman, Sachs & Co. and its average deal size of $168.3 million.

That contrasts with seventh-ranked negotiated underwriter RBC Capital Markets, which was senior manager on 474 deals totaling $12.1 billion, for an average deal size of $25.5 million.

“We have always done big deals and our average deal size has always been number one or number two,” Shank said, adding that the firm goes after larger issues “very aggressively” but doesn’t turn away small deals.

The firm is also the second-ranked senior underwriter among airport issues. It completed nine deals this year worth almost $2 billion, reflecting a 15.7% ­market share.

Siebert is also the eighth-largest co-manager overall, participating in 275 issues this year worth $8.6 billion.

“It takes just as much work to do a $20 million deal or a $600 million deal,” Shank said. “We’ve just been very fortunate to do some of the bigger deals.”

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