Capital Markets
Investment Banking Wunderlich's mission is to deliver sophisticated execution capabilities to emerging growth and middle market companies. Our bankers possess a broad depository of transactional skills, honed by decades of experience and hundreds of transactions through all market cycles. We help our clients with the entire right side of their balance sheet. Our clients work hard to utilize their assets and earn a return on them. Our job is to help our clients finance those assets in the most efficient manner for all stakeholders in the enterprise.
Transactions
Capital Markets We underwrite and place new issues of securities by providing market insight during the structuring phase and professional execution in the marketing phase of each transaction.
Private Placements We have multiple sources of capital in the private sector that include institutional managers, strategic investors, family offices and individuals. We structure and place each transaction catered to the demands of issuers that meet the greatest supply of investors.
Advisory Services Our bench of professionals is very broad. Our experience not only comes from decades of transactional work, it comes from entrepreneurship, accounting and commercial banking. This experience and sound judgment provides impartial and innovative advice for our clients.
Mergers & Acquisitions:
- Exclusive Sales
- Divestitures
- Management & Leveraged Buyouts
- Fairness Opinions
- Special Committee Assignments
- Joint Ventures
We buy and sell companies every day. Our core competencies are market making and valuation. So, whether our clients are buying or selling, we are with them every step ensuring a successful transaction.
Bios
Paul R. Ferretti, Managing Director – Prior to joining Wunderlich Securities Inc., Paul worked at Collins Stewart as a Managing Director of Energy Investment Banking and at Ferris, Baker Watts as a Senior Vice President of Energy Investment Banking. Previously, Paul was with Morgan Joseph as a Managing Director with responsibility for overall Energy sector coverage. Before that he was a senior energy analyst with Ladenburg Thalmann & Company, and has held similar positions with Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, ABN Amro, and Dillon Read, among others. Mr. Ferretti is a member of the National Association of Petroleum Investment Analysts and the Association for Investment Management and Research. He holds a B.A. in Economics from the Brooklyn College. Email: pferretti@wundernet.com
Christopher A. Freeman, Senior Vice President – Prior to joining Wunderlich Securities, Inc., Chris worked at Collins Stewart as a Vice President of Energy Investment Banking and at Ferris, Baker Watts as a Vice President of Energy Investment Banking. Previously, Chris was a Vice President of Investment Banking for Unterberg, Towbin, working on public offerings, private placements of debt and equity capital as well as mergers and acquisitions. Prior to joining Unterberg, Towbin, he worked in the Corporate Finance Group at Arthur Andersen. He holds a B.A. degree in Politics from U.C.L.A and a M.B.A. from U.C. Berkeley.
Email: cfreeman@wundernet.com
J. Wesley Grace, Managing Director
Prior to joining Wunderlich Securities in January 2007, Mr. Grace was a Managing Partner of Heritage Capital Advisors, LLC, a private equity investment firm based in Atlanta, Georgia, where he originated and structured private equity investments in emerging and middle market businesses. Previously, Mr. Grace served as Senior Vice President of Legacy Securities Corp., a boutique investment banking firm, where he originated and executed capital raising and merger & acquisition assignments on behalf of middle market companies. With over 15 years of investment banking experience, Mr. Grace has advised clients in the areas of mergers and acquisitions, equity and debt offerings, recapitalizations, management & leveraged buyouts, and private equity fund financing. Mr. Grace holds a M.B.A. in Finance from Tulane University and a B.B.A. in Finance from the University of Mississippi. Email: wgrace@wundernet.com
James E. Harwood, Managing Director, Director of Investment Banking
Prior to joining Wunderlich Securities in 2001, Mr. Harwood was a Senior Vice President with Morgan Keegan's investment banking group. During his eight-year tenure, he completed more than 60 transactions encompassing public and private placement of debt and equity securities valued at over $4 billion, as well as advisory assignments for mergers and acquisitions. Mr. Harwood holds a B.S. in Business Administration from Millsaps College and an M.B.A. from Emory University. Mr. Harwood is a board member of the Harwood Center, an early childhood intervention agency. Email: jharwood@wundernet.com
John S. Moore, Managing Director
Mr. Moore joined Wunderlich Securities in 1999. He has been in investment banking since 1992. Mr. Moore has structured a variety of capital financing and merger and acquisition transactions and served clients in a number of turnaround management engagements. Previously, he served 17 years in commercial banking, including Controller, Treasurer, and Senior Vice President of Finance with First Tennessee National Corporation (now First Horizon National Corp) and as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of United American Bank. Mr. Moore began his career in public accounting with Arthur Andersen & Co. Mr. Moore holds a B.B.A. in Accounting from the University of Memphis, and is a Certified Public Accountant.
Email: jmoore@wundernet.com
Robert W. (Bob) Rasch, Senior Vice President
Prior to joining Wunderlich, Mr. Rasch spent three years with Morgan Keegan Investment Banking Group where he worked on deals in a number of industries that included aviation, specialty finance, publishing, real estate, retail and manufacturing. Prior to his work as an investment banker, Mr. Rasch was an entrepreneur with business interests ranging from medical devices to convenience stores. Mr. Rasch has his undergraduate degree in Finance/Economics from Christian Brothers University and his MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
Email: brasch@wundernet.com
Robert J. Looney, Managing Director, Head of Insurance Investment banking –Prior to joining Wunderlich Securities in 2009, Mr. Looney led the insurance investment banking effort in New York for KeyBanc Capital Markets. Prior to joining Key, he was a managing director at Advest, Inc. in New York where he advised both property/casualty and life/health insurance companies and brokers. He was also a manager in the New York insurance practice at Coopers & Lybrand, LLP (now known as PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP), where he audited multinational insurance companies including American International Group, Inc. and General Reinsurance Corporation. Mr. Looney has extensive transaction experience in common stock, preferred stock and debt offerings as well as mergers and acquisitions specific to insurance companies. His responsibilities here at Wunderlich include marketing the firm’s financial advisory, capital markets and other services to insurance companies in the United States and Bermuda. Mr. Looney is a Certified Public Accountant and earned his B.S. degree in Accountancy from Villanova University and his MBA degree at Columbia Business School.
Email: rlooney@wundernet.com
Thomas G. Rudkin, Managing Director – Mr. Rudkin is a managing director in the Financial Institutions Group. He is focused on executing deals with banks and thrifts, mainly calling on banks in the southeastern United States. Prior to joining Wunderlich Securities in 2009, Mr. Rudkin worked with a number of financial institutions for over twenty-five years in an investment banking capacity. He has been responsible for handling numerous investment banking assignments raising capital both privately and publicly for financial institutions throughout the east coast. In addition, Mr. Rudkin has also been responsible for a number of mergers & acquisitions and fairness opinions for banks during the same period of time. Prior to joining Wunderlich Securities, Mr. Rudkin was Head of the Financial Institutions Groups at Stanford Group and Tucker Anthony prior to its sale to Royal Bank of Canada. Mr. Rudkin was also a partner with Keefe Managers, LLC which was a $250 million bank fund and a partner with Keefe Ventures, LLC which was a broker dealer that raised capital for banks around the country. Mr. Rudkin also brings a wealth of knowledge and understanding dealing with troubled banks from his years of working with the major Northeast banks while with Citibank in the early 1990s.
Email: trudkin@wundernet.com