Municipal industry veterans Eric Vandercar and Peter Bianchini have been recognized by Smith's Research & Gradings for high-quality work on the buy-side of the municipal market, while John Hallacy, who has nearly 40 years in municipal finance, was chosen to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award.
Vandercar and Bianchini, both institutional sales and trading professionals at Chicago-based independent financial services firm Mesirow Financial, are among municipal professionals elected to the third-party analysis firm's 2014 Municipal All-Star Team, Smith's said Tuesday in an announcement on its website.
It is the second year in a row that Vandercar, who joined Mesirow's New York office in March as a senior managing director and head of municipal funding, was elected to the First Team in the municipal derivative category.
He previously spent nearly 27 years at Morgan Stanley, where he developed and managed its municipal funding, liquidity, credit, and lending businesses, built the firm's primary market liquidity and lending businesses, served as a municipal portfolio strategist, and traded the municipal proprietary arbitrage account.
He now leads Mesirow's Tender Option Bond transactions and other municipal investor funding products, and has structured, executed, and marketed the first TOB Series for non-banking entities designed to be fully compliant with the recently enacted Volcker Rule, which goes into effect in July 2015, the investment firm said in a separate press release.
Bianchini, a managing director and senior municipal strategist based in San Francisco, was elected to the second team in the generalist category and second team in the higher education bond category.
Previously named to Smith's All-Star Team in various categories, Bianchini -- who has over 20 years of experience in the municipal market -- focuses on credit research for Mesirow's global markets division and provides market insight to the firm's clients and colleagues.
He formerly headed west coast origination at XL Capital Assurance, and worked at Charles Schwab Investment Management, where he was responsible for research and analytical support for Schwab's municipal mutual funds. Prior to that, he was a senior analyst at Standard & Poor's, responsible for ratings, criteria, and business development.
Hallacy, who has more than 35 years in the investment industry, including 15 years as the manager of municipal research at the former Merrill Lynch & Co., joined Assured Guaranty as managing director of public finance in September 2013.
Hallacy is a previous managing director and head of a global public finance group at MBIA.
Moody's Investors Service regained the top position as the No. 1 team in 2014, while BlackRock Inc. was named the No. 1 buy-side firm. Smith's first established the All-Star team in 1992. The team and individual awards are voted on by over 1,000 institutional investors each year.
The winning municipal professionals and firms will be honored at a Dec. 3 awards program in New York.
