Former Morgan Stanley public finance chief heads to Jefferies

Longtime public finance veteran Brian Wynne has landed at Jefferies Financial Group Inc. after being ousted in January from Morgan Stanley, where turnover on its muni team continues.

At Jefferies, Wynne will co-head the municipal syndicate group with Roy Carlberg.

Wynne “brings decades of experience and a unique perspective to our issuer and investor clients,” said Jefferies co-heads of sales and trading Vic Kalaydjian and Drew Levinson in a statement. “When you have the opportunity to hire a seasoned veteran that enhances your overall franchise, you take it.”

Wynne, who was Morgan Stanley’s head of public finance, was pushed out as part of a larger shakeup at the investment bank last year and in January that encompassed top titles across the bank’s muni securities business.

More recent departures include Doug Rischmann, who was managing director and head of high-grade trades, according to sources.

Glen Balanoff, executive director on the syndicate desk, who had been at Morgan Stanley for more than 22 years, is also out, sources said.

Karma Pemba, an executive director in banking who covered K-12 school districts and community colleges in California and had been with the firm for more than nine years, will head to RBC Capital Markets after his garden leave, according to an RBC spokesperson. He will be a managing director at RBC.

Mikaela Rix, vice president in trading, is also leaving, as is Shawn Nicholson, an executive director in sales whose LinkedIn page said he’s been at the firm for more than 14 years.

Chad Wildman, who was senior technologist that supported the muni team, has also left. His LinkedIn page has his title as head of Muni Quant Strategies, and that he’s been at the firm for more than eight years.

“It’s a continued retrenchment in the business,” an industry source said. “That’s a fair amount of people who have been there for a long time as well as younger people making lateral moves,” the source said. The departures of the veteran muni members suggest how “certain firms just want to get younger and probably pay people less.”

“As you lose people, it’s going to be harder to replace them,” the source added.

The departures come after a rocky 2022 for munis and after Morgan Stanley in August tapped Jared Mesznik as new head of munis. Mesznik replaced Patrick Haskell, who joined Morgan Stanley in 2009 and had led muni securities since 2013.

Wynne, who had been at the firm for 33 years, had served as head of the municipal syndicate and deputy head of public finance since 2008 before being named in 2012 to jointly lead public finance banking along with Charlie Visconsi. He solely led the group after Visconsi left in July 2017.

Wynne is married to Jefferies’ head of municipal finance, Kym Arnone.

Broker-dealers have trimmed their teams in 2023 amid last year’s steep decline in issuance and concerns over a recession and a continued dry spell for deals this year.

UBS Financial Services in late January slashed 20% of its overall municipal team. Citi in February cut three positions from its municipal ranks.

Total 2022 municipal bond sale volume plunged 21% from 2021 as rising interest rates stymied refundings and taxable issuances.

Morgan Stanley last year rose a notch to become the third-largest senior manager in 2022, leading 232 issues valued at $27.49 billion and capturing a 7.6% market share, according to data from Refinitiv.

In 2022, Jefferies ranked 8th as senior manager with 108 deals totaling $16.3 billion, representing a 4.5% market share, according to Refinitiv.

While issuance has been meager so far in 2023 — a 30% year-over-year drop in March alone — Jefferies has climbed the rankings in the first quarter to land in the top five at number three. In the first quarter, Jefferies accounted for $6.572 billion and 8.9% of the market, moving up to third place among the major municipal underwriters. The company underwrote $3.494 billion in the first quarter of 2022, occupying 11th place with a market share of 3.6% and underwriting $3.494 billion.

Morgan Stanley, which had a market share of 8.8% and $6.520 billion in revenue, moved up from sixth to fourth in the first quarter. In Q1 2022, the firm’s par value was at $5.537 billion and its market share of to 5.7%.

Citi dropped to ninth place from fifth at $3.256 billion and a 4.4% market share in the first quarter and UBS was not in the top 16, but was 16th in the first quarter of 2022.