Stone & Youngberg, a private investment bank headquartered in San Francisco, is continuing to expand its Northeast operations with four new senior hires.
The firm has been beefing up its New York office, which opened in 2004, since expanding to a larger space on Park Avenue about six months ago.
S&Y has been senior manager on 175 issues this year totaling $3.5 billion, making it the 16th- largest underwriter nationwide. Most of that business stems from its home base in California, where it enjoys a 6.7% market share. The firm currently ranks sixth in the Golden State with 126 issues worth $2.9 billion, according to Thomson Reuters.
The expanded group in New York has senior managed three issues in the region this year totaling $175 million — nearly triple the $59 million of deals it led in 2009.
Its co-managing volume in the Northeast has doubled from the prior year. To date, Stone & Youngberg has participated in 37 deals worth $660 million, up from 10 deals adding up to $326 million in 2009. That helped boost its regional ranking to 29th from 42d.
Ramiro Albarran, director of East Coast operations, expects it will take some time for the group to match the underwriting volume of its headquarters in California, but with the new hires the firm’s regional build-out is now complete with 30 employees. Aside from looking for one more analyst, the new office has no more room for bankers and is already busting at the seams, he said.
The new faces include Stephen Collins, Walter Kulakowski, James Gabal, and Stephen DiTursi.
Collins, who has been a retail broker for 25 years, started a few days ago as a senior vice president. He is charged with expanding the firm’s high net-worth private client group, which currently operates out of San Diego, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.
Since June 2008, Collins had been an executive vice president at Laidlaw & Co., an investment banking and brokerage firm. He was responsible for institutional and retail sales development at Laidlaw as group head of private client services.
Collins previously spent about four years as a sales manager with middle market accounts in the private-client services division at Deutsche Bank. His career as a retail broker began in 1984 with E. F. Hutton.
“Stephen’s expertise and familiarity with the New York marketplace will be an asset as we expand in the region,” said Bill Evans, head of the firm’s private client group, which oversees $5 billion of assets through its network of advisers. Evans said he sees “tremendous opportunity” to grow the firm’s presence in New York.
Kulakowski, known for his 20 years at Citi, where he was a director of public finance until 2007, joined S&Y last month as a managing director of public finance. He most recently spent a year as a senior vice president at Roosevelt & Cross, where he provided investment banking services to municipal clients. He also spent about a year as a senior vice president with Environmental Capital LLC, where he was responsible for carbon-credit sourcing and advisory work.
Early in his career, Kulakowski headed environmental regulatory programs for Indiana and Indianapolis, and acted as an energy and environmental consultant for two Washington, D.C.-based firms.
“Walter will be a tremendous asset to Stone & Youngberg as we expand our market share of state-level financing projects,” said Steve Heaney, the firm’s head of public finance.
Gabal joined the firm last week as a vice president in the municipal sales and trading group. He most recently worked at RBC Wealth Management, which he joined in 2007 to specialize in middle-market fixed income sales. He previously worked in the syndicated loan departments at UBS and Credit Suisse.
“James’ expertise in middle markets is a welcome compliment to our existing team,” said Richard Beames, who heads S&Y’s institutional sales group.
DiTursi, who has 25 years of background as a taxable trader, joined the institutional sales and trading group as managing director and regional taxable sales manager. He was most recently a partner at Florida-based investment firm JVB Financial Group, where he managed its taxable sales and trading activities. Earlier, he was a senior vice president with Morgan Keegan & Co., where he led the taxable sales group for the New York region. DiTursi’s career began as a corporate bond trader with Mabon Securities.
“Steve has an excellent track record of success in building middle-market platforms,” said Jack Turner, S&Y’s head of taxable sales and trading. “ I look forward to him being a major contributor in our continued growth in the Eastern United States corridor.”
