Costa Mesa-based RSM EquiCo Inc. has named rising star Hector J. Cuellar as president, another step in the investment bank’s evolution from its family roots.
Cuellar takes over from Joseph McSpadden, who headed RSM EquiCo on an interim basis for the past year after stepping in to replace cofounder Coby Sonenshine.
“It’s now in a final transition,” Cuellar said of RSM’s evolution. “We’ve had interim CEOs, and this closes the book on the transition from the founders to corporate staff.”
Sonenshine, mother Sheila Sonenshine and Richard Rodnick started the business as EquiCo Resources LLC.
In 2001, Kansas City-based H & R; Block Inc. bought the operation and folded it into its Chicago-based RSM McGladrey Inc., a provider of business and tax consulting services.
Sheila Sonenshine, a retired California judge and local benefactor, left in late 2004. Coby Sonenshine left about a year ago after a stint as head of business development. Rodnick left earlier and served as a consultant to RSM EquiCo.
The investment bank does mergers and acquisitions, divestitures, capital raising and fairness opinions on offers and valuations for companies with yearly revenue up to $1 billion. It employs about 125 people in Costa Mesa and 225 worldwide.
Move Expected
Cuellar, who had served as and retains his title of president of RSM EquiCo Capital Markets LLC, had been expected to take over the top job. Many insiders welcomed the news.
Two years ago, Coby Sonenshine recruited the 50-year-old Cuellar to run the capital markets unit, which oversees investment bankers focused on specific industries.
That’s when Sonenshine gave up his chief executive title of the unit to focus on running all of RSM EquiCo as president.
Cuellar’s star status began to shine with a 2005 restructuring. That’s when he started running the capital markets unit along industry lines. Now RSM EquiCo has 10 industry practices with two more due this year.
Cuellar, since joining RSM EquiCo in 2004 from Bank of America Corp., has helped the investment bank become the nation’s third most active mergers and acquisitions adviser on deals of less than $100 million.
RSM EquiCo is 18th in deals of all sizes, according to Santa Monica-based FactSet Mergerstat LLC.
The investment bank’s average deal has grown to $30 million in the 12 months ended April 30, from $11.5 million when Cuellar joined in 2004. He sees average deal sizes growing to about $50 million this fiscal year.
Cuellar has pushed his group to do larger, more profitable deals. He also wants to grow the company’s Euro-pean business and get in on deals in Singapore, India and China.
Nearly a quarter of RSM EquiCo’s deals this past fiscal year were international, Cuellar said.
RSM EquiCo hopes to close 60 deals next year, up from 28 in 2004.
Cuellar has tapped several executives from Banc of America Securities LLC to help run RSM EquiCo’s industry practices.
“I won’t hesitate to go to well-known territory to make hires because of their industry expertise and chemistry. That means a lot,” he said. “When you are growing fast, you can’t make mistakes.”
Earlier this year, he hired Charlene Davidson, a longtime corporate banker with Banc of America Securities, to build RSM EquiCo’s financial services practice. Other former BofA executives include Bruce Manchester and Jean Cayanni, both of whom hold senior managing director posts with RSM EquiCo.
Cuellar was managing director of the Los Angeles office of Bank of America’s investment unit. He worked with aerospace, defense, engineering and construction companies.
He joined Bank of America in 1980 as an international finance officer and associate vice president in the bank’s Mexico City office, where he handled corporate and government clients.
Cuellar later moved to the bank’s Chicago office, where he served industrial clients and later was promoted to managing director.
He holds a bachelor’s in accounting from Loyola University in Chicago and a master’s in business from Northwestern University’s J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management.
Cuellar is a director of the Mexican-American Legal and Educational Defense Fund and previously was president of the California Pacific Chapter of the U.S. Mexico Chamber of Commerce. Two years ago, he was named one of the nation’s 100 most influential Hispanics by Hispanic Business magazine.
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Banking Dean Findley Passes Away at Age 85
Gerry Findley, considered the dean of California community banking, died Sept. 10 at his home in Brea at the age of 85.
In the early 1960s, Findley created The Findley Reports, a monthly newsletter that provided financial analysis of banks, thrifts and credit unions in California. Findley, who was born in Truman, Ark., was responsible for the creation of more than 100 community banks and thrifts as part of a consulting business that lasted half a century until the late 1990s.
The Anaheim-based monthly newsletter continues today. It is written by his son, Gary Findley, a banking lawyer.
,Pat Maio
