JPMorgan has hired two bankers away from regional powerhouse Seattle-Northwest Securities Corp. to open a Seattle office, its first public finance post in the region.
Christine Pihl, now a JPMorgan vice president, will head the office, and associate Jeb Spengler will report to her. Pihl was formerly an investment banker and vice president in Seattle-Northwest’s public finance division, and Spengler was an assistant vice president. The two joined the firm last week.
“[Pihl’s] primary focus will be on energy clients,” said managing director Gene Saffold, head of public finance investment banking at JPMorgan. “But she brings a broad base of skills and client relationships, so I think she’ll be involved across all sectors of clients.”
Saffold said the new hires are results of recognizing the need to have a local presence — people on the ground in an area the bank has targeted for expansion.
JPMorgan consistently ranks among the top senior underwriters nationwide, based on total par, according to Thomson Financial data. But the data also shows that JPMorgan has ranked 10th or lower in four of the last five years among underwriters in the northwest region comprising Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington.
Through the end of September, the firm was the ninth largest underwriter in the region, which JPMorgan previously covered with bankers in its San Francisco office or with sector specialists in other offices. The bank sees Seattle as a foothold in an area growing demographically, Saffold said.
The proliferation of energy issuers is an added bonus, and was part of the reason JPMorgan chose Pihl and Spengler to seed its new office, he added.
“In building a presence out in the Pacific northwest, their experience and skills, especially with energy clients, was particularly attractive,” he said. “There are numerous large energy clients of our own and others who are there.”
For example, public power supplier Energy Northwest has been one of the area’s top five issuers of public debt during the last five years, issuing as much as $1.2 billion of debt in 2003. Based just north of Richland, Wash., the utility has already sold $907.5 million of bonds this year, more than $860 million of it as part of a deal Goldman, Sachs & Co. priced in March, Thomson data shows.
Nationwide, JPMorgan has underwritten more than $900 million of electric power bonds in each of the last five years, ranking it in the top three every year until 2006. Through the end of the third quarter this year, the bank had managed just $216.1 million of power deals, or ninth-most, Thomson data shows.
