Dain Rauscher Signs Two from Van Kasper; Morgan and TIAA-CREF Also

As positions in banking research open up, bank analysts are on the move.

Joseph K. Morford 3d and Jeffrey T. Runnfeldt joined San Francisco's Dain Rauscher Wessels banking team on Aug. 5. The two worked together for a year and a half at First Security Van Kasper, a boutique securities firm in San Francisco.

Mr. Morford, 32, will cover regional banks and thrifts on the West Coast and focus on banks that are using the Internet in innovative ways, such as Wells Fargo & Co. and Bank One Corp.

Mr. Runnfeldt, the company's new e-finance analyst, will focus on Internet banks, on-line lenders, and electronic payment and billing companies -- coverage he spearheaded at First Security Van Kasper.

Both analysts report to John Adams, director of research.

They succeed R. Jay Tejera and Ben Crabtree, who left Dain Rauscher Wessels earlier this year. Mr. Tejera went to Ragen MacKenzie Inc. in Seattle, and Mr. Crabtree joined the Minneapolis office of George K. Baum & Co.

"Dain Rauscher Wessels is a bigger company and offers a broader platform" than Van Kasper, Mr. Morford said. Mr. Runnfeldt, 33, said he was attracted to Dain Rauscher partly because it has an established Internet research group with five other analysts. Mr. Morford said he expects to roll out coverage in two and a half weeks; Mr. Runnfeldt expects to do so in six and a half weeks.

Mr. Morford and Mr. Runnfeldt have been a team since they worked together at BT Alex. Brown in San Francisco almost three years ago. Mr. Morford was a bank analyst and Mr. Runnfeldt an associate research analyst. They both left in 1998 to join First Security Van Kasper, also in San Francisco, where Mr. Morford was a senior bank analyst and associate director of research and Mr. Runnfeldt was a bank and finance analyst who led the firm's coverage of Internet banking.

As previously reported Michael Granger left Fox-Pitt Kelton Inc. to join J.P. Morgan & Co. last week, as a mid-cap bank analyst

And veteran analyst Carole S. Berger will join TIAA-CREF, the world's largest pension fund, on Sept. 1, as a buy-side analyst. For the past two years Ms. Berger has headed her own hedge firm, Berger & Jackson Capital Management, that focuses on financial institutions.

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