George K. Baum makes public finance move in Kansas City by hiring Ameritas team

CHICAGO – Ameritas Investment Corp.’s Kansas City, Mo., public finance banking team led by veteran banker Jack Holland has landed at George K. Baum & Co., the firm said Thursday.

All eight members of the group made the leap to Baum this week. Most had followed Holland from Oppenheimer in 2015 to open the Kansas City office for Ameritas as it sought to branch out from its Nebraska headquarters. Holland had been at Oppenheimer for 25 years before the move.

Ameritas had grown more focused on its insurance business and intended to shutter the Missouri office, sources said. The group had talked to numerous firms and found Baum the best fit, one source said. Baum, a privately held investment bank, is headquartered in Kansas City although its public finance group is headquartered in Denver.

"This team of tenured, experienced and highly successful professionals will help solidify George K. Baum & Company as a market leader in Kansas and Missouri," the firm’s chief executive officer, Jon Baum, said in statement. “Not only is Jack a highly respected public finance professional, he deserves great credit for developing this strong team of professionals who now call GKB their new home."

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Holland, a 40-year veteran of public finance, joined the firm as a senior vice president. "We look forward to the opportunity to continue our focus on the needs of municipal issuers and help expand such a well-established public finance practice," Holland said in the statement.

The other members of the team are Michael Short, a senior vice president who served 10 year as a Platte County commissioner and serves as lead banker for many local government issuers in Missouri; Matt Webster, a first vice president, who has specialized in project financings throughout the Midwest; Karolyn Cline, a vice president who works on local government financings; and Stan Jones, a vice president, who served as director of bond services for the Kansas State Treasurer's Office before he joined the team.

The other members are John McArthur, a senior municipal finance banker who specializes in Kansas cities, counties and school districts; Ike Parsons, a senior municipal finance banker, who has served as a banker, analyst and project coordinator; and Joanne Huey, an administrative assistant, who aids bankers in their day-to-day work.

Baum is among the top senior managers in Kasnas and Missouri. The new group brings to about 50 the number of Baum bankers in its 21 municipal finance division offices. The team from Ameritas joins an office with a handful of existing bankers. One source said there’s some client-issuer overlap but the aim is to complement the firm’s serving of those clients.

Although Ameritas Investment Corp. -- an affiliate of Ameritas Life Insurance Corp. - closed its Kansas City office at the end of 2017, AIC stands ready to do business in all 50 states, including public finance, said firm spokeswoman Ann Avery. Ameritas will continue to have a presence in the Kansas City area through its insurance and financial services, and through the Ameritas group division's regional office in Overland Park, Kansas. In addition, Ameritas continues to hold real estate and mortgage loan investments in the Kansas City area, she added.

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