Sandler O'Neill & Partners LP will announce several key promotions today and will name Emmett J. Daly, a Merrill Lynch & Co. banker, as a principal in its investment banking group.
Mr. Daly, 42, has been hired as a banker advising midcap banking companies and thrifts on mergers and acquisitions and on raising capital and debt. He joined Merrill three years ago, after 12 years at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods Inc., to help rebuild its midcap banking practice after Merrill lost its team to Lehman Brothers.
Sandler will also announce that it has named Bill Hickey and Brian Sterling as the co-heads of its investment banking group. In addition Fred Price, a principal and a member of the company's three-member executive management team, will be named to lead its capital markets group; and Brian Bertonazzi, also a principal, to lead Sandler's equity sales and trading group.
Mr. Sterling, 42, came to Sandler in February from Merrill. Mr. Hickey, 37, Mr. Bertonazzi, 43, and Mr. Price, 48, are all Sandler veterans, and Mr. Price was a founding partner back in 1988.
Sandler specializes in serving financial institutions. It makes markets in 500 stocks and provides research for 200 companies.
Its main office was in the World Trade Center, and the company lost 66 people in the terror attacks in September 2001. In the last 12 months it has rebuilt its ranks, and in the process made several high-profile hires from bulge-bracket firms. These have included William A. Eagan 3d from UBS Warburg, who joined as a managing director in investment banking in July; and Robert A. Albertson, a former head of research at Goldman Sachs, who joined as chief strategist and a principal in June.
The company now employs 195 people, 25 more than in September 2001. That includes 25 principals, and Jimmy Dunne, the managing principal, said in a telephone interview Friday that in the next few days seven people will be invited to join that group.
They would bring it back to the pre-9/11 level, but "that's not intentional," Mr. Dunne said. "We are not replacing anyone; we've retired their numbers."
Mr. Dunne said he has known Mr. Daly for more than two years and was keen to have him come aboard. "I'm slow, but I'm persistent," he said.
Mr. Daly said the decision to change firms was "not about Merrill; it's more about my interest in returning to a boutique."
Sandler has advised on 24 deals announced this year; their value is just shy of $3 billion, Mr. Dunne said. The outlook for next year is similar, he said, at least for the first half. "The real big glamour deals are a ways off."
At Merrill, Mr. Daly's group advised Allied Irish Banks PLC on the $3.1 billion sale of Baltimore-based Allfirst Financial to M&T Bank Corp. of Buffalo. It also advised Citizens Financial Group Financial Group Inc. of Providence, R.I., a unit of Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC, on its $450 million deal to buy Commonwealth Bancorp Inc. of Norristown, Pa.
Asked whether he was done hiring, Mr. Dunne said, "We feel like we've doing a good job to strengthen our overall firm, but I wouldn't say we're done."
