Six months after announcing that long-time public finance leader Terry Atkinson would be stepping down, UBS Securities LLC in an internal memo Friday named managing director Ralph Saggiomo the next head of municipal banking.
Saggiomo, currently part of UBS’s municipal securities group in Philadelphia, will begin his new job Jan. 1. Between now and then, he will work closely with Atkinson, who will then retire from the firm toward the end of the first quarter, UBS said.
Saggiomo is the third member of UBS’ new muni leadership to be named since the end of October, when it was announced that Ross Jackman left JPMorgan to become a new managing director at UBS. Just a few days later, derivatives specialist Seema Mohanty was hired away from Morgan Stanley to head a new solutions group for UBS.
Jackman will start working at UBS before this year is out, and Mohanty will follow at the beginning of the year, the company said.
“All of these hires have been done to try and recreate and transform our group into being a leading franchise player,” said David Shulman, head of UBS’ municipal securities group. “While, I’m certainly proud of the footprint we have on the banking side, we clearly have a lot of room to grow on the capital markets side as well — to leverage off of the access that has been created by our banking franchise.”
Shulman named public-private partnerships, along with the health care, housing, and student loan sectors, as priorities for UBS bankers during the coming year. And while Shulman said his hiring streak is over for the near term, he added, “I clearly have a number of candidates on my radar screen.”
Saggiomo started at UBS predecessor PaineWebber in 1994, according to the internal memo. He will now report directly to Shulman, who took over the muni business at UBS this spring when the firm announced Atkinson would retire.
Since Atkinson joined PaineWebber in 1987, the firm has ranked sixth or better every year in Thomson Financial’s records of the busiest municipal underwriters. It has been the second largest underwriter of U.S. public debt in each of the last nine years and is on pace for a repeat performance this year, Thomson data shows.
“I would say that Terry leaves a lasting legacy at UBS,” said Peter Hill, former head of public finance at JPMorgan who left that firm in August. “They have a great and broadly based business, which Shulman and his new team are fortunate to carry on.”
“I’m sure there are many former competitors — myself among them — who look forward to seeing [Atkinson] lead a life of leisure,” he added. “I’ll believe it when I see it, however.”
