Bond Firm Brings Aboard Hispanics in Bid to Open Doors
Newport Beach-based O’Connor & Co. Securities, an underwriter of bonds from cities and other government agencies, has brought in two Hispanic investment bankers as it sees the ranks of Hispanic officials rising in government.
In January, the firm acquired USACapital Inc.’s San Diego operations in a bid to connect with Hispanic officials in California. (Sources close to the company said last week that O’Connor itself could be attracting interest as an acquisition target, something the firm declined to comment on.)
USACapital is based in Philadelphia and had two Hispanic bankers on its payroll. USACapital decided to sell off the San Diego operation in a bid to focus on the East Coast.
“We saw an opportunity with the two gentlemen down in Coronado,” said William O’Connor, chief executive of O’Connor & Co. “Because they are so much of our constituency and because they are Hispanic.”
“As there are more Hispanic public officials, there are more opportunities for transactions,” said Gary Cabello, one of the two Hispanics from USACapital and now a senior vice president at O’Connor.
Louis Ruiz-Dana is the banker to join from O’Connor.
Cabello said that public finance is a tight-knit business. Public agency officials may, at best, do two to three bond offerings during their tenure.
“Our job also is to educate Hispanic officials on public finance,” Cabello said. “It’s very difficult to open the doors because it’s a very closed business. Most people wouldn’t even return your calls unless you have some kind of contact.”
“When that opportunity presented itself with (USACapital), we decided to pick them up,” O’Connor said. “In Orange County and in the Inland area where we do business it is helpful to have Hispanics on the payroll.”
Cabello and Ruiz-Dana were high-producing bankers at USACapital. Together, they averaged seven to 10 deals a year worth about $100 million. They focused mainly on California, where a third of the population now is Hispanic.
“Of course, certainly nobody ever gives you a deal because you are Hispanic,” Cabello said. “You have to work for it. But certainly being Hispanic opens the doors.”
Cabello said that he and Ruiz-Dana are working on three deals and that a couple of them could be finalized by late August.
O’Connor started operations 18 years ago in Los Angeles and moved to Newport Beach in the summer of 1995, right after the county of Orange filed for bankruptcy.
The firm has done more than $2.5 billion of tax-exempt financing as senior manager in the past 10 years. O’Connor mainly deals with institutional clients such as mutual funds and insurance companies.
The firm now is planning to look beyond California. It is eyeing the municipal bond market in Mexico, according to O’Conner.
“We are also interested in across the boarder transactions,” he said.
“We are dabbling in Mexico,” said Ruiz-Dana, a senior vice president at O’Connor. “There is no municipal bond market in Mexico.” n
