BRADENTON, Fla. - In what it says is a coup for a regional firm, Sterne, Agee & Leach Inc. has hired James "Jamie" M. Cortese as a managing director to head up municipal underwriting, sales, and trading in New York.
Cortese most recently was the managing director for national municipal underwriting at UBS Securities LLC. He had been with the company - which has now exited much of its municipal securities business - for 15 years.
After leaving UBS in December, Cortese was considering offers from a number of firms before he decided to join Sterne.
"I believe the regional firms that are committed to the municipal securities business present a new area of growth," Cortese said in an interview yesterday. "I do feel going forward that Sterne Agee - in their quest to expand their municipal business as well as other businesses - provides a great opportunity to our municipal clients."
Hanson Slaughter, senior managing director of Sterne's public finance group, said Cortese brings 25 years of experience in underwriting, sales, and trading to the firm's municipal distribution effort.
Cortese's expertise spans all sectors of municipal finance, plus he is an effective communicator with issuers and bankers, Slaughter said.
"When he signed on with us the buzz on the street was phenomenal," he said. "I think it is an enormous coup for the firm."
Sterne has been expanding aggressively as larger investment banks contract in the wake of the global financial crisis. The firm recently opened its first municipal finance office in South Florida with two new bankers.
The firm currently has nearly 700 employees, with 40 new hires in January alone, and plans to continue expansion efforts.
"It's imperative as we move to the next level that we have a market underwriter who has all the relationships and the knowledge of the market, and the issues that Jamie does, to work with our existing team and also to help recruit new people," Slaughter said.
Cortese, who started work last week and already has begun hiring new employees in institutional sales and trading, said he plans to use his past experience with former shops to build Sterne's platform.
But given what has unfolded with the financial crisis, particularly involving larger investment banks, Cortese said the municipal market is likely to evolve into a more traditional market without such sophisticated products as certain auction-rate securities.
"I think that the muni market will go back to serving more traditional trading platform of servicing retail investors, bond funds, trust departments, as well as insurance and casualty companies," he predicted.
Prior to joining UBS, Cortese was the national syndicate manager for Kemper Securities. Before that he worked for Dean Witter Reynolds.
He earned a degree from State University of New York at Oswego with a major in business administration and a minor in economics.
Sterne Agee is headquartered in Birmingham, Ala., and has public finance offices in Atlanta, Birmingham, Boston, Fort Lauderdale, Houston, Macon, New York, and San Antonio.
Sterne Agee's public finance group served as an underwriter on more than 147 municipal financings totaling $16.7 billion in par amount in the last year, the firm said.
