WASHINGTON — The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board has elected Dougherty & Co.’s Alan Polsky as chairman, municipal advisor Robert Lamb as vice chairman, and five new members — two from banks, one from a securities firm, and two members of the public.
The officers will serve one-year terms and new members three-year terms beginning Oct. 1.
The new members, selected from a list of more than 120 candidates that have been made public by the MSRB, are: Joseph J. Geraci, a managing director at Citi in New York; Daniel Heimowitz, a managing director at RBC Capital Markets’ U.S. municipal finance group in New York; Edward J. De La Rosa, president and founder of De La Rosa & Co. in Los Angeles; Peter J. Taylor, executive vice president and chief financial officer of the University of California system in Oakland; and Dall Forsythe, vice president of finance and operations at Atlantic Philanthropies in New York.
Polsky, who is responsible for Dougherty’s negotiated muni underwriting and fixed-income institutional sales and research, will replace Michael Bartolotta, First Southwest Co.’s vice chairman, as MSRB chairman.
Polsky has been at Dougherty for 26 years and formerly chaired the National Federation of Municipal Analysts. Before joining Dougherty, he was controller for the University of Minnesota Foundation and an audit manager for Peat, Marwick & Mitchell.
He holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Lamb, founder and president of Lamont Financial Services Corp., a municipal advisory firm in Wayne, N.J., will take the place of John W. Young 2nd, a managing director at Samuel A. Ramirez & Co. in New York, as vice chairman. Before founding his advisory firm, Lamb was a principal at L.F. Rothschild & Co. where he was a senior banker, head of its infrastructure group, and senior managing underwriter on many bond deals. He is a registered as an investment advisor and holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Albany.
The two bank representatives will be Geraci, who is also co-head of capital markets for Citi’s municipal securities division, and Heimowitz. Geraci holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from Harvard University.
Before joining RBC, Heimowitz was a managing director at Lehman Brothers and an executive vice president and director of the public finance department at Moody’s Investors Service, where he worked for 19 years.
He holds bachelor’s degrees in economics and geography from Clark University and a master’s degree in city planning from Harvard University.
De La Rosa will be a securities representative. Before founding his firm, which plays a key role as an underwriter and market maker for California bonds, he was vice president of capital markets at First Interstate Bank.
He serves on the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association’s municipal executive steering committee and was chairman of the board for the California Public Securities Association. He has a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of California at San Diego and a master’s degree in management from the Yale School of Management.
Taylor and Forsythe will be public representatives. Taylor was a managing director at Barclays Capital and a managing director at Lehman Brothers before joining the University of California system. He has a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of California in Los Angeles and a master’s degree in public policy analysis from Claremont Graduate University.
He also completed a one-year graduate-level fellowship with the Coro Foundation.
Before joining Atlantic Philanthropies, Forsythe taught financial management at New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service. He also taught at Baruch College, the Kennedy School at Harvard, and Columbia University.
He was chief administrative officer for the Episcopal Diocese of New York and budget director for New York State. He holds bachelor’s and doctorate degrees in political science from Columbia University.
Those leaving the board include: Young; Stanley Grayson, vice chairman, chief operating officer at M. R. Beal & Co. in New York; Martin Vogtsberger, a managing director and head of institutional brokerage at Fifth Third Securities Inc.; Frank Thomas Howard, executive director of the Office of Financial Management, Finance and Administration Cabinet in Kentucky; and Kathleen McDonough, former senior managing director at Ambac Financial Group, two public members leaving the MSRB.
Under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the MSRB must have a majority public board of at least 15 members. The board currently has 21 members and has asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to approve that number on a permanent basis, with three groups serving three-year staggered terms.
A nominating committee plans to nominate certain existing members for extended terms to make that work. The full board must approve the proposed extensions.
