JPMorgan has brought in several new bankers and a new head of muni research to expand its public finance coverage across the country.
With the hires, the firm reopened offices in Miami and Albany, N.Y., and introduced new leadership for the western region. Having already built up its sales, trading, credit origination, and banking businesses, JPMorgan wanted to continue expanding to help more issuer clients, according to head of public finance Jeff Bosland.
“We’ve been working hard to round out our banking talent,” he said. “We want to cover the entire country with the best resources. We’ve been working to improve our breadth and depth in banking. As the days and weeks go by, we’ve added talent along the way, and have been increasingly effective in helping more issuer clients.”
The firm’s public finance group has grown about 10% since the start of 2010, Bosland said.
The firm recently focused on addressing its coverage in the West. JPMorgan has done a lot of business there, he said, but felt as though it had room to grow.
“We’re doing things to improve our market share in the West and Northwest,” Bosland said. “The Southeast is also an area of growth for us. In the areas where you would expect us to be strong — where a lot of the heavy issuance is — we already are. But we’re trying to do even better in the vast majority of states. Our key hiring targets have been in areas where we think we can improve.”
The firm brought in a squad of veterans, all of whom are on the executive director or managing director level. They have all been in the business for more than a decade.
Alex Burnett leads the western region and is based in San Francisco. Mike Carlson heads the transportation group and is also in San Francisco. Doug Hartman, in banking, covers Texas regional clients and is based in Dallas. Giles Nicholson, currently on garden leave, is in banking and based in New York City. Jose Pagan will lead the south Florida banking effort from the Miami office. Rob Pattison, covering Northeast clients, is based in Albany, N.Y. Tim Peterson, in banking, covers clients in the Southwest. He is based in Houston.
Peter DeGroot, a research analyst who oversaw indexes at Barclays Capital that have been used as benchmarks in the industry, will be the head of municipal research when he starts in June. He will be based in New York City.
Last year, JPMorgan reorganized its public finance group internally. Jamison Feheley, head of regional muni banking, Paul Ryan, head of infrastructure advisory, transportation, and energy, and Michael Maloney, head of health care, higher education, and not-for-profits, now report directly to Bosland.
The realignment let the firm streamline its organizational structure from a time when each individual region used to report directly to Bosland. The group is now more efficient and nimble in how it makes decisions and reaches clients, he said.
“The discipline of having three senior people responsible for making sure we cover the entire country across all the product lines has been very valuable to us,” Bosland said. “It helps you identify needs and opportunities. There’s tight ownership of each of the product lines and it lets us help clients more effectively.”
JPMorgan has hired almost 20 analysts and associates, all told, over the course of the past year, said James Lansing, head of debt capital markets and credit origination.
The new hires do much of the work that comes with broadening coverage within each business profile, Lansing said.
It includes responding to requests for proposals, going on client calls, and generally providing more points of engagement across the country, he added.
