Continuing the trend of capitalizing on the disruption caused by financial woes at the parent companies of some of the municipal market's largest investment banks, Samuel A. Ramirez & Co. has hired five muni professionals from global banks in recent months.
The hires include Rob Pattison, who joined the firm as a senior vice president on the public finance banking side. Pattison, last at JPMorgan, has opened Ramirez's new Albany office.
Ramirez also hired Frederick Putnam, most recently of JPMorgan, as an analyst working out of its New York City headquarters. Chris Cost, most recently of UBS Securities LLC, joins Ramirez's New York office as a vice president in the investment capital markets group.
Ramirez also hired two institutional sales people in Chicago. Tom Wood and Liz West, both most recently at Goldman, Sachs & Co., join Ramirez as vice presidents.
The landscape of the municipal market changed drastically over the last year as UBS closed its muni division, JPMorgan purchased Bear, Stearns & Co., and many of the market's biggest banks made cutbacks across the board, which included layoffs in public finance. Many of the municipal market's other players have used the opening to pick up professionals and grow their staffs.
"We are looking, as everyone else is, for good people and opportunities," said firm founder and president Samuel A. Ramirez. "As you know for this firm after 38 years has always pretty much stuck to its knitting, and this is an opportunity to hire very, very talented people that fill a need here."
The hires come after Ramirez last year added four former Bear Stearns professionals to its staff. The additions included former Bear public finance chief Daniel Keating, who serves as chief operating officer of public finance, sales, and trading at Ramirez.
Keating said the firm will consider expanding further.
"We're going to take what the market gives us, but the platform that we have set up here would look to infrastructure bankers to build on that," he said. "We have also talked to people in all the other sectors including utility, housing, and health care."
