BankBoston Corp. has created a new investment banking group and appointed its loan syndications chief to run it.
The banking company is folding its loan syndications, investment banking, corporate finance, and mergers and acquisitions advisory services into a single unit to be headed by managing director Mary Etta Schneider.
Beginning Jan. 1, Ms. Schneider will oversee the origination and structuring of a bevy of products now scattered among BancBoston Securities Inc. and BankBoston's corporate banking and global capital markets groups. A 10-year BankBoston veteran, Ms. Schneider now heads BancBoston Securities' loan syndications, trading, and research group.
"We have to be thinking more in the line of providing solutions rather than selling them products," said Ms. Schneider. "What we're really trying to achieve with this is that corporate finance specialists will be just as versed in selling high-yield as they will be in selling loan syndications or private placement or derivatives."
The investment banking group, which will also manage BankBoston's relationships with leveraged buyout firms, will include about 75 professionals. The group expects to hire eight to 15 more professionals in the near term, Ms. Schneider said.
BankBoston established its section 20 securities subsidiary, BancBoston Securities, in February. It has built its high-yield bond group into what observers say is a successful new entrant.
Distribution of several capital markets products will remain the province of the bank's global capital markets division. But corporate clients will now have a single source offering access to the bank's products and services.
Equities remains the missing element in the bank's otherwise full one- stop-shopping corporate finance menu. BancBoston Securities has Federal Reserve Board approval to underwrite corporate debt and equity but has not completed its strategy for entering the stock business, said Ms. Schneider.
She will continue to report to Paul F. Hogan, vice chairman of BankBoston and head of corporate banking.
