Veteran Chicago-based municipal professional Chris Mier retired this week from Loop Capital Markets LLC, where he led strategy and analysis for the last two decades, but he’s staying engaged in the municipal market through a new endeavor: Rosebud Strategies LLC.
Mier joined the Chicago-based majority minority-owned firm in its early years as the 31st employee, bringing his reputation to the table. He served as chief strategist and manager of the Analytical Services Division. The division’s team performs economic analysis and commentary, public finance, yield curve analytics, option valuation, debt issuance strategies.
The firm now has about 175 employees in offices across the country, Mier said.
With more than four decades in the municipal business, Mier started 2020 pondering retirement but had mixed feelings. He discussed it with his boss, Loop’s co-founder and Chief Executive Officer and Chairman Jim Reynolds, and the idea of setting up a LLC that would allow him to continue producing some research products he’s known for while also pursuing other interests came to fruition.
“The great opportunity I’m getting is being able to continue doing the stuff that I know and love and that I can maintain client relationships at the same time I’m out from under the regulatory umbrella,” Mier, 64, said in an interview this week. “The situation is advantageous to me because I can do these other things that are prohibited when you work for a broker-dealer.”
One such activity banned by regulators by broker-dealer professionals is political work. Mier said he will be advising Nicolle Grasse on budgetary, tax, and capital issues in her bid for a trustee seat on the Arlington Heights, Illinois, village board.
Mier will also continue to produce various research and analytic products for Loop like his annual pension report and volume predictions. He will also join a local university as an adjunct professor teaching finance, economics, and public administration.
Mier formally retired from Loop Tuesday and launched Rosebud, a reference to the film Citizen Kane, on Wednesday.
Mier, a St. Louis native, entered the business with a job in Detroit when he was 21 at what evolved into Comerica Bank after graduating from the University of Michigan. He started as a municipal analyst and did stints on the trading desk and then managed a portfolio.
He later took a job at the former Kemper Financial Services in Chicago where he managed the municipal bond department. After 13 years there, he moved to Zurich Scudder Investments.
Reynolds, who co-founded Loop in 1997, recruited Mier in 2000.
“From the moment he became a part of the firm to his retirement more than 20 years later, Chris has been a consummate professional. I can say without any reservation or hesitation that we would not be the firm that we are today without Chris. He was a trusted partner for all of those years and will be missed by the entire firm,” Reynolds said.
Mier credits Reynolds for establishing an internal research and analytic department at a time when many firms were laying off those professionals as triple-A bond insurance proliferated.
“Jim saw the value in it and went against the grain,” Mier said. When the 2008 financial crisis struck and sunk top-rated monoline insurers, internal analysis again found favor and “all the sudden people cared about credit again.”
Mier said he’s proud to have been part of the firm’s evolution now with equity and other divisions and its growth from a local firm that got its foot in the door as a minority-owned broker-dealer in co-manager spots to a player in the senior manager field with top bankers and offices across the country that can compete on the same level as major national firms.
“I believe we proved that at Loop, we can compete with the best firms in the business,” Mier said.
The firm ranks 18th so far this year among senior managers nationally, credited by Refinitiv with leading 34 issues valued at $3.93 billion. It ranked 25th nationally last year with 25 issues valued at $2.17 billion. In its Midwest base, the firm ranks 13th so far this year with 17 issues valued at $1.86 billion and ranked 24th last year, credited with five issues valued at $510 million.
Mier said high points include the building of a volume prediction model that incorporated interest rates, tax revenues, economic growth and budget variables and has generally been accurate by plus or minus seven points.
Mier has watched various evolutions of the municipal market with regulatory changes driving some change, credit analysis falling in and out of favor, the growing impact of technology, and the fluctuating needs of borrowers. The availability and use of real-time data will play a bigger role going forward. “There’s going to be more rigorous quantitative analytics going into credit decisions,” Mier said.
The post-pandemic economy faces a tough road and there are uncertainties for government issuers as to the recovery, particularly considering the level of debt taken on by local, state and federal governments and public finance will be shaped by some of those needs.
“COVID will leave a legacy of debt,” Mier said.
