EBondTrade, a California-based online municipal bond trading firm, has announced an agreement with Merrill Lynch & Co. under which four eBondTrade investment bankers will work exclusively with Merrill to provide financial advisory and investment banking services to state and local governments.
Richard Meister, eBondTrade's chief executive officer, along with vice presidents Ben Wolfe and David Stephens, and associate Jason Wong will work on new-issue assignments as full-time Merrill Lynch consultants.
Meister said that the agreement will align eBondTrade's experienced investment bankers with one of the strongest firms on Wall Street.
"Merrill has incredible capabilities in underwriting, distribution, and trading, as well as teams of terrific bankers, so it became a very good fit for our bankers to become aligned with Merrill Lynch," Meister said. "It allows these bankers to lead manage transactions, which is what they really do best."
Merrill Lynch and eBondTrade have been in ongoing negotiations for the past several months over ways they could work together. These discussions led to Merrill's decision last summer to hire Edward Burdett and Cheryl Hines, two former executives with eBondTrade, to join Merrill's West Coast branch.
The two bankers replaced Los Angeles bankers H. Cody Press and Chris Mukai, who resigned from Merrill Lynch and moved to Salomon Smith Barney Inc.
Meister said that eBondTrade already has done "extremely well" in building up its online trading platform.
"With Merrill Lynch's capital position and market clout, we expect the banking effort to be very successful," Meister said. "We're all very interested in looking together for a way to better serve the municipal marketplace."
"We've acquired experienced investment bankers to help us in all the areas we cover," said Edward Malmstrom, co-head of public finance at Merrill Lynch. "They are all proven professionals, and we are confident they will immediately bolster our efforts to provide preeminent performance for our clients."
Prior to joining eBond Trade, Meister had been with Goldman, Sachs & Co.'s municipal bond department from 1980 through 1999, leaving the firm as a managing director. At Goldman Sachs, Meister managed the firm's western and southwestern municipal finance regions and co-headed the health care and higher education groups.
Wolfe has 25 years of municipal bond experience, working with health care, higher education, and state and local government issuers. Before joining eBondTrade, Wolfe was a managing director with Prudential Securities.
Stephens had 15 years of experience as a public finance investment banker and financial advisor, running his own financial advisory firm specializing in transportation, public power, and local government for the western states.
Wong had worked for Goldman Sachs for six years in various capacities before joining eBondTrade.
