ATLANTA - The Robinson-Humphrey Co. has realigned its management in municipal finance, giving new responsibilities to company veterans Jon Kilgore and David Gray.
Effective Feb. 3, Gray took over from Robert Setzer as managing director running the Atlanta-based company's public finance department. However, Setzer stays on as an influential senior banker in public finance, which in Robinson-Humphrey's lexicon involves recruiting negotiated bond deals and handling a smaller book of financial advisory relationships.
At Robinson-Humphrey, department director is largely a day-to-day managerial position while most strategic decisions are made at a higher group level, Gray explained.
Also, for the first time the public finance department now reports up to Kilgore as director of the company's municipal securities division. Previously, Setzer's and Kilgore's jobs had been at the level in the organizational chart and public finance was a separate unit. Kilgore's authority already had been cast over most other municipal finance functions, such as trading, institutional sales, and pricing of negotiated and competitive deals.
Setzer had manned the helm for public finance for years. The transition "is sort of a natural progression, nothing earthshaking," said Gray, 44, who has been with Robinson-Humphrey since 1985. "As time goes on, events change."
The bond market shouldn't look for any shift in the company's pursuit of negotiated health care and general infrastructure issues such as water and sewer bonds and certificates of participation, he added. "The record is solid" and the company ranks either first or second in those business lines in each of its "core group" states: Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, he said.
When numbers from 11 Southeastern states are compiled, Robinson- Humphrey's book of business in both negotiated bond deals and financial advisory work is down from 1993 but still has grown for each of the last three years. In 1996, the firm was part of the syndicate on $1.7 billion worth of negotiated deals in the region, according to Securities Data Co., and was financial adviser on $128.4 million worth of issues.
Setzer and Kilgore did not return calls yesterday.
A unit of Smith Barney Inc., Robinson-Humphrey does public finance work from offices in Atlanta and Charlotte. It also has a wide network of equity trading offices throughout the Southeast.
