CHICAGO — Chicago-based Mesirow Financial has hired a 27-year Morgan Stanley veteran to head municipal funding in its institutional sales and trading department.
Eric Vandercar joins the firm's New York office as a senior managing director and head of municipal funding, according to a statement from the firm. He will focus on tender option bond transactions and other municipal investor funding products.
Vandercar developed and managed Morgan Stanley's municipal funding, liquidity, credit and lending businesses. During his nearly 27 years there, Vandercar built the firm's primary market liquidity and lending businesses, served as a municipal portfolio strategist and traded the municipal proprietary arbitrage account.
Mesirow described Vandercar as a leader in product innovation over the past 15 years in the development and execution of new funding alternatives to replace auction rate preferred securities including municipal term preferreds and variable rate demand preferreds.
"Eric's extensive expertise in municipals and tender option bond transactions will be instrumental as we continue to grow our municipal bond business and provide clients with new investment opportunities," said Dominick Mondi, president of financial capital markets at Mesirow. "The current evolving regulatory environment has created a unique opportunity for Mesirow Financial as a non-banking entity to provide efficient and innovative client solutions."
When the Volcker rule goes into effect in July 2015, it will prohibit banks from owning TOBs, which institutions can utilize to invest in high-quality municipal bonds, among other long-term investments, opening up opportunities for non-bank financial companies to fill a possible void.
The firm's institutional sales and trading department employs more than 150 professionals on desks specializing in municipals, rates, corporates, preferreds and non-agency mortgages.
