The departure of four senior executives from Kemper Securities Inc. within the past few weeks has prompted the realignment of some of the company's operations.
Fred C. Hosken, a senior executive vice president and the director of capital services there, resigned on July 1.
Mark J. Magee, executive vice president and department manager of municipal sales. trading, and underwriting, resigned last week.
And William C. Feeley, who had been director of corporate finance and syndicate services, and Jay B. Walters, director of investment services, also have left the company, a Kemper spokeswoman confirmed.
The spokeswoman did not say when Feeley and Walters left and declined to discuss the departures.
"We are in a position where we are moving forward, looking closely at the way we are aligned, and strengthening our organization in a number of ways." the spokeswoman, Ellen Resnick, said.
"We've entered a new era. We're very optimistic about the direction we're taking and the team we are continuing to assemble as we move forward," Resnick said.
Since completing the reorganization of its brokerage operations in 1991, Kemper Corp., of which Kemper Securities is a division, has been plagued with problems in its securities division.
Within the past year, rumors circulated among market participants that Kemper Corp. was interested in selling the securities division.
Although corporate executives say the company will continue to operate that business, some market participants remain skeptical and point to such uncertainty as a cause of some executives' departures.
Among the recent departees, Magee has been named senior vice president and director of municipal bond institutional sales and trading for Raymond James & Associates Inc.
Magee is responsible for building the institutional sales and trading operations in the firm's new Chicago-office, which opened Monday.
The office is the second for Raymond James from which it conducts municipal bond business, Magee said.
"We want to acquire people who are talented. One of the things we're going to look at is how people do business with clients on a long-term basis," Magee said.
"One of the attractions with Raymond James is that I feel they're going to be around for a long time," he said. "This is their core business to provide a stable platform to look at the long-term needs of institutional clients."
In his new role, Magee also expects to focus on expanding Raymond James' research and quantitative analysis capabilities to better serve institutional clients.
Magee said he may open additional Raymond James' municipal offices throughout the country.
Magee had been a senior vice president responsible for municipal commitments, trading, and underwriting at Kemper until his promotion to executive vice president late last year. In that role. he replaced Robert E. Davis Jr., who left last December to pursue other interests.
Davis, along with another former Kemper executive, James P. Fitzsgerald, formed Fitzgerald Davis, a Chicago-based, fixed-income broker-dealer in January.
Magee began his career in 1980 at First Chicago Capital Markets as a municipal bond trader for that firm's retail and institutional clients. He joined Blunt Ellis & Loewi, a former Kemper subsidiary, in 1985.
Magee has been replaced by Peter N. Lahti, who was named to the new position of director of fixed-income services.
In that position, Lahti, who had been director of taxable fixed-income sales, will be responsible for all fixed-income sales and trading, including municipals.
Hosken's resignation prompted several other changes at the Chicago-based firm.
In mid-July, James R. Boris, the firm's chairman, president and chief executive officer, announced the addition of six people to the firm's operating committee, which reports to him and helps set a direction for the firm.
"Rather than replace [Hosken] with one individual, Boris decided to give some of the people that had reported to [Hosken] more responsibility and a place on the operating committee," Resnick said.
Thomas R. Reedy, Kemper's director of public finance, was named to the operating committee. He will also oversee the firm's tax-exempt, fixed-income research area in addition to other responsibilities.
Lahti also was added to the committee, as were Ramon Pecuch, director of equity sales; James L. Roberts, who replaced Feeley as head of corporate finance; David M. Greene, an executive vice president responsible for retail branch activities; and J. Michael Patterson, an executive vice president and director of strategic planning.
