KeyBank Picks Herrera To Open Office in N.Y.C.

KeyBank broadened its coverage of municipal client relationships in the Northeast by opening a New York City office for its public sector group. The bank tapped industry veteran Jose Herrera as a senior vice president and senior relationship manager to run it.

Herrera joins the bank’s public sector group in the Northeast region, which covers municipal account relationships and provides bank services to its municipal clients. Those services include underwriting, depository accounts, cash management and bank loans.

He is also responsible for business development in the region and reports to Derek Chauvette, executive vice president and head of KeyBank’s public sector unit.

Both the bank and public sector group want to expand their footprint in a measured way throughout the eastern region, Herrera said. KeyBank has 21 relationship managers within the public sector group stationed in three regions: the Northwest, Midwest and Northeast.

The Northeast has four managers running offices in New York: Albany, Syracuse, Rochester and now New York City.

“We have significant presence already in New York through our Albany office,” Herrera said. “A lot of our clients are state clients, though some are city clients. We want to increase our exposure in the city and the contiguous county areas.”

KeyBank also wants to build different vertical business lines within the public sector. In that vein, it hired Herrera to bring expertise and experience in the area of public-private partnerships to finance infrastructure. The public sector group also seeks to bring aboard people in other specialties, Herrera added, such as experts in higher education and municipal power.

Herrera brings to his job more than 25 years of municipal infrastructure finance and capital markets experience from his time with five U.S. and international banks.

Prior to joining KeyBank, he served as senior vice president and head of the North America P3 and municipal infrastructure group at the German bank Commerzbank. There, he managed a group charged with the origination and execution of complex debt financings for public sector clients and private-equity sponsors.

Previously, he served as executive director of the public finance department at WestLB AG, also based in Germany. There, he was responsible for the origination, structuring, credit analysis, legal review and portfolio maintenance of bank credit products for health care, utilities, transportation, education, general obligation, limited tax, and public-private partnerships for clients in North America.

Herrera earned a BA in foreign service from Baylor University.

Cleveland-based KeyBank served as underwriter in 2011 on 13 issues worth $315.2 million, according to Thomson Reuters data. It had a 0.1% market share and ranked 61st for the year.

That followed the firm’s work as underwriter on 32 issues worth $776.7 million in 2010. In that year, KeyBank ranked 45th out of all senior managers in public finance with a 0.2% market share.

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