Stifel Financial, a full-service brokerage and investment banking firm, has completed its merger with Thomas Weisel Partners Group.
The combined company will continue to operate under the Stifel Financial name. Stifel Financial will remain headquartered in St Louis, Missouri with significant presence in Baltimore, New York, San Francisco, and Toronto.
Stifel said that its investment banking platform Nicolaus & Company will operate under the Stifel Nicolaus Weisel name.
According to Stifel Financial, with very little overlap in investment banking and research, the combination is additive to the existing platform in a number of ways. The investment banking team consists of more than 250 associates providing debt, equity and equity-linked offerings, private placements, and strategic advisory services.
In research, the combination creates one of the largest US equity research platforms, with more than 1,000 companies under coverage. The combination also expands Stifel’s institutional equity business both domestically and internationally.
Ronald Kruszewski, chairman, president, and CEO of Stifel Financial, said: “This transaction continues our commitment to balanced growth by expanding our investment banking platform in key sectors of the global economy. The integration planning process has gone extremely well, and we now look forward to executing our plan with an enhanced platform that is well-positioned to compete in our core competencies and expand into others.
“Our clients will experience an expanded set of product offerings across broader industry groups, and we expect our combined results will continue to drive value for our shareholders. We believe this transaction is accretive to book value, to earnings per share, and to our growth rate.”