When Atlanta's former chief financial officer David Corbin was not invited tostay onboard after the new administration took over last year, he helped found TrinityAdvisors, a national management consulting and financial advisory firm.
Now, almost two years later, Corbin is selling some of the assets of TrinityAdvisors toRaymond James & Associates Inc. and has himself joined the firm's public finance groupas a director of national infrastructure.
Raymond James announced last week that it was acquiring certain assets of Corbin'scompany. Trinity advises major municipal issuers on their internal policies such asaccounting procedures as well as their debt-management policies. Terms of the deal werenot disclosed, but officials said the arrangement entailed Raymond James buying only thedebt-management side of Trinity, with Trinity continuing its other management consultingwork. None of Trinity's 16 employees on the consulting side will be affected.
Corbin spent about two years working for former Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell, and decidedto rejoin the private sector when Campbell's term ended in 2001. Prior to becoming thecity's CFO, Corbin was a banker with UBS PaineWebber, now UBS Financial Services Inc.
Instead of immediately seeking work with another large firm with a public financedepartment, Corbin said he opted to start a company that would serve a niche amongmunicipal issuers. And now, selling the debt-management side of the business to RaymondJames will allow clients to benefit from the substantial and national distribution andmarketing abilities of the larger company, Corbin said.
"This will allow us to leverage a greater amount of resources and capital to get moredone," he said. This transaction is the second time in 10 years in which Corbin has solda debt-related business to a major brokerage firm. In 1994, he sold his firm Corbin &Co. to Interstate/Johnson Lane, which was subsequently sold to Wachovia.
In the two years that Corbin has headed Trinity, clients have included Jefferson County,Ala., Fulton County, Ga., the University of Georgia, and Detroit.
The dealings eventually led to the company working as a consultant on issues in whichRaymond James served as underwriter, according to Henry Reyes, a managing director atRaymond James. That earlier cooperative relationship made the two firms' recent comingtogether easier to achieve, he said.
While the deal gives Corbin the chance to spin off some of the assets of his businessand have access to the extensive distribution and sales ability, it gives Raymond Jamesthe opportunity to continue to grow its practice nationally.
And as Raymond James pursues that goal, officials decided that instead of launching itsown debt-management group, it would be better to fold part of Corbin's business into thefirm's because of Corbin's own experience in the industry.
"David had a great reputation from his term as CFO in Atlanta and his 10 to 12 years ofinvestment banking experience," Reyes said. "Besides his experience in bond issuance,David also had solid general public finance expertise and through Trinity, had served asadviser to several cities and counties."
To his credit, under Corbin's watch, Standard & Poor's changed its outlook on the cityto stable from negative. After the new administration took over, the rating agencychanged the outlook back to negative, citing budget pressures. While a banker at UBSPaineWebber, Corbin worked on Atlanta's historic $1 billion water and sewer deal.
