Chase Securities Inc. has lured another Wall Street M&A pro to its nascent mergers and acquisitions team.
David B. Edelson, a member of Goldman, Sachs & Co.'s vaunted financial institutions group, has joined Chase as a managing director. He reports to Mark Davis, the former Salomon Brothers banker Chase tapped to run its M&A business last year.
"Chase is in the process of building a world-class M&A effort," said Mr. Davis in a telephone interview. Mr. Edelson's hiring will help Chase leverage its "huge, deep relationship base" with the insurance and financial sectors into more M&A business, he said.
Mr. Edelson spent 12 years at Goldman, where he was most recently a vice president. He had been working in the firm's financial institutions group since 1991.
Last year, that group advised buyers in two of the banking industry's largest M&A deals: Wells Fargo & Co.'s takeover of First Interstate Bancorp and NationsBank Corp.'s purchase of Boatmen's Bancshares.
Goldman's advisory role in a total of eight deals accounted for more than half of the entire financial services sector's M&A volume last year, adding up to $25.6 billion. Its closest competitor, Morgan Stanley & Co., advised on five deals valued at $17.9 billion.
Last year, Chase hired David Cohen from S.G. Warburg & Co. as a managing director on its mergers and acquisition team.
Meanwhile, CIBC Wood Gundy, the section 20 subsidiary of Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, has hired Bruce S. Garver as managing director and head of its still-forming convertible securities group.
The unit will be a part of the firm's high-yield group, formed in 1995 after the acquisition of Argosy Group.
"We see a lot of synergies between the high-yield and convertible businesses," said Leon M. Wagner, head of high-yield sales and trading.
"The convertible bond business is a business where over half of the issuers are below investment grade, so what we have in research and banking will enable us to do a fair amount of business," he said.
Mr. Garver, previously a director and head of institutional convertible sales and trading at Smith Barney, will oversee the formation of the convertible group, which is expected to be up and running with seven staffers by March 1.
