The PrinceRidge Group has hired a former Rodman & Renshaw manager as the head of a new equity trading and institutional sales trading group.
The broker dealer and investment banking subsidiary of Institutional Financial Markets said it hired James Dyer to head the business.
Dyer most recently served as senior manager director of institutional equity sales and trading with Rodman & Renshaw.
Rodman & Renshaw last month filed a request with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority to withdraw from the brokerage business. But Dyer preceded that move, having left Rodman in 2010. He called his Rodman stint “a small blip in my career.”
Before joining Rodman & Renshaw, Dyer was general partner and head of equity trading at Maxim Group, a New York investment banking, securities and investment management firm. There, he helped growth the volume in its equity trading business from roughly 2 million shares a month in 2004 to 300 million in 2009.
He also, at one point in his 27-year career in equities trading, was head of trading and an executive committee member at BrokerageAmerica, also based in New York.
The breadth of PrinceRidge’s businesses, from bond trading to investment banking, attracted Dyer. But he could help fill that out.
“They needed an equity desk to round out their whole platform,’’ he said.
Dyer said the equity desk will concentrate on “secondary and tertiary names” and sectors such as chemicals and consumer products, in its trading operations. He said he is in the process of hiring four or five institutional traders, with 10 or more years of experience each.
PrinceRidge also said it hired Ari Wald as Desk Analyst. Wald previously served as Assistant Vice President of Institutional Equity Research at Brown Brothers Harriman.
IFMI in 2011 recorded revenue of $100.3 million, according to an annual filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Of that, $73.2 million came from trading, $21.7 million from asset management and $3.6 million from advisory services.
Daniel Cohen, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of PrinceRidge, said, “our clients will have access to an enhanced set of product offerings,’’ as the result of the formation of the equities group.
PrinceRidge has strong expertise in collective investment arrangements, such as special purpose acquisition corporations, and plans to expand into such fields as private investment in public equity plans, master limited partnerships and “regular equity offerings,’’ the company said in announcing Dyer’s hiring.
Rodman & Renshaw said it planned too explore options for selling the assets of its broker-dealer business. A representative of the firm was not immediately available to comment on the status of that exploration.
