Company Overview
Siebert Brandford Shank & Co., L.L.C. (“SBS”), located in New York, NY, is the nation’s #1 ranked Minority Business Enterprise (“MBE”) municipal finance firm and a Top 5 ranked MBE corporate underwriting firm. The company’s product and service offerings include municipal bond underwriting, corporate debt and equity underwriting, investment banking and execution services for many of the largest Fortune 500 companies. The firm was founded in 1996 by the late Muriel Siebert, the first woman to own a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, whose interest was owned by Siebert Financial Corp. (NYSE: SIEB), together with Suzanne Shank and Napoleon Brandford III.
Situation
Ms. Siebert passed in August 2013, and her estate was seeking liquidity for her SBS investment, while Mr. Brandford decided he wanted to retire and sell his equity stake as well. Ms. Shank, also President and CEO of SBS, wanted to continue managing SBS’s growth, while maintaining both its minority- and woman-owned status. Toward that end, she identified potential new management and external investors. While a positive first step, SBS still needed (i) to agree to terms with both the selling and new investors, (ii) substantial additional capital to fund the recapitalization and (iii) to maintain its FINRA-regulated capital levels.
Solution
IMB Development Corporation was engaged to assist in a consulting capacity, and subsequently recommended Griffin Financial Group to act as financial advisor based on Griffin’s prior experience with WBE/MBE and professional services firms. Griffin and IMB quickly assessed the viability of the recapitalization, and assisted SBS in valuing, structuring and negotiating the terms with both selling and new investors. In addition, Griffin constructed numerous capital structure options to provide the additional capital and managed a competitive capital raising process, which produced several term sheets. SBS ultimately selected Metro Bank as senior lender, and realigned its ownership structure to create the preeminent minority- and woman-owned firm on Wall Street with the following equity investors:
Co-founder Suzanne Shank rolled her equity ownership interest and will become majority owner of the firm and hold the title of Chairwoman and CEO.
For more information on this transaction, please contact Griffin’s John A. Lee, Senior Managing Director, at 610.205.6106 or R. Patrick Wood, Senior Vice President, at 610.478.2110. For IMB, please contact Tarrus Richardson, CEO, at 646.619.8757 or trichardson@imbdc.com.
