First Albany Capital has hired three senior high-yield professionals from RBC Capital Markets--two managing directors and one director--as part of FAC's push into the speculative-grade market. Peter Parent, managing director at RBC, is joining as managing director and head of high-yield; Ken Ambrecht, also a managing director at RBC, comes to FAC as managing director and high-yield salesman and Jim Wolf, director in high-yield research at RBC, joins as managing director in a similar role. Dan Elkaim, head of high-yield sales at RBC, did not return calls.
"We're just getting started right now, but we're looking forward to helping First Albany expand its business into lower-rated corporates through our research-focused approach to high-yield," said Parent. He reports to Rob Fine, managing director at First Albany. Parent added that he is looking to add professionals in fixed-income sales, trading and research. Parent noted that First Albany plans to open a Greenwich, Conn., fixed-income sales office in the next couple of months that will be primarily focused on high-yield. The Greenwich location was selected to potentially attract some of the high-quality professionals who live locally as hires, and to cater to the tremendous amount of hedge fund customers there, explained Parent.
