Memphis-based broker-dealer Carty & Co. has expanded its public finance and fixed-income sales departments with the additions of two seasoned municipal investment bankers and a new branch office.
Rush “Buddy” Harding IV and Edmond Hurst have joined the ranks of the firm to lead the expansion effort: Harding in February as senior vice president, stockholder, and director who will manage the newly opened Little Rock, Arkansas, branch, and Hurst, on March 17, who joined Harding in the Little Rock office as head of national public finance and capital markets.
They come from Crew & Associates, where Harding had more than 14 years of experience specializing in fixed-income sales and trading to both retail and institutional investors, and Hurst who has nearly 30 years of experience in investment banking.
The additions come as consolidations continue. In late February, TD Bank Group purchased Tennessee-based First Horizon Corp., parent of FHN Financial, in an all-cash transaction valued at $13.4 billion.
The deal makes Carty & Co. the last locally owned broker-dealer in Memphis.
Hurst spent most of his career facilitating taxable and tax-exempt financings, from state and local governments and charter schools to tax-increment financing and water and sewer systems, across the country, but mostly in Arkansas.
Hurst began his investment banking career selling bonds at the age of 20 while attending college full time in the evenings and weekends, and transitioned into public finance early in his career.
After previous attempts at expanding the public finance operations, the firm said the timing and resources are right to initiate the growth plan, according to Jennifer Carty Scola, Carty’s chief operating officer.
“Carty has the experience, capital, and sales force to back up the public finance we are adding in Little Rock,” she told The Bond Buyer.
“With those tools in hand, we felt it was the right time,” Scola added. “With our Memphis and now Little Rock sales force, we have the distribution needed to support Hurst’s efforts.”
The firm is eager to bring the pair of veterans into the firm “to build and grow our firm’s public finance business,” Chief Executive Officer Bill Carty said in a release.
Scola said the firm will continue to expand its Memphis and Little Rock offices in both areas of public finance and fixed-income sales and trading, hiring already licensed professionals, but also relying on “the way we have traditionally expanded — organically.”
Carty & Co., which has 50 years in the business of fixed income sales and trading, is licensed in 52 states and territories, and serves individual as well as institutional clients.
