RBC Beefs Up Its Muni Platform With New Hires

RBC Capital Markets is expanding its municipal platform with new hires for its sales and trading group.

Patrick McGarry and Allan Vare join as directors in the firm’s New York office, reporting to sales and trading manager Kenneth Friedrich and institutional sales manager Karl Hummel.

McGarry and Vare “add to our platform that continues to broaden the coverage of tier-one institutional accounts,” said Mark Maroney, head of RBC Municipal Capital Markets, who oversees the sales, trading, and distribution groups. “We continue to build our platform where necessary to make sure we have a robust and complete product offering for our smallest and largest clients.”

McGarry comes from Jefferies & Co. where he traded municipal bonds. At RBC, he will focus on trading bonds within various sectors of the institutional market, including airport, tobacco, and health care bonds.

Vare hails from Morgan Stanley. At his new firm, he will focus on the largest tier-one institutional sales accounts and will focus his coverage based on the size of the account, not by region or sector.

While RBC has been an active hirer, Maroney views the two additions not necessarily as part of a larger hiring effort, but as a way to expand the business as opportunities present themselves.

“We are dedicated to the U.S. municipal bond market and these hires are part of a continued focus to cover large issuers and buyers,” he said.

He added that there is not necessarily a target number to be hired by year-end, but there will be more additions if and when RBC sees “opportunities to expand the coverage model as we continue to build.”

One of the firm’s goals is to continue to grow market share as one of the top seven dealers in the marketplace. McGarry and Vare are the sixth major hires RBC has made in the muni space since last September.

Most recently, Arthur Chan joined the New York office to devise financing solutions and provide quantitative analysis for its banking clients. Chan heads the debt solution group within the capital markets’ finance department and works alongside the large-issue department and public power group.

RBC ran the books on 659 issues last year totaling $19.8 billion, ranking it seventh, according to Thomson Reuters.

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