Sandler O'Neill + Partners L.P.

ABOUT THIS COMPANY:

Focused on financials

A privately-owned investment bank, Sandler O’Neill focuses exclusively on the financial services sector: its client list consists of banks, thrifts, broker-dealers, specialty finance companies, e-finance companies, exchanges, real estate investment trusts (REITs), insurance companies, asset and wealth managers, and financial technology companies. Its services include M&A advisory, capital raising, research, equity trading and sales, investment portfolio and interest rate risk management, fixed income securities transactions, and mortgage finance restructurings.  It also assists thrifts and insurance companies with mutual-to-stock conversions. Sandler O’Neill + Partners was founded in New York City in 1988 by Herman S. Sandler and five other veterans of Bear Stearns. Today, Sandler O’Neill has additional offices in Boston, Chicago, Atlanta, and San Francisco. Its mortgage finance division operates in Memphis. Formerly headquartered in the World Trade Center, Sandler O’Neill lost more than a third of its employees, including co-founder Herman Sandler and investment banking head Christopher Quackenbush, in the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. The firm's recovery from the attacks earned it respectful praise in the press; in a Newsweek feature, senior managing partner Jimmy Dunne revealed that in addition to maintaining the Sandler O’Neill Assistance Foundation for the victims’ families, the firm decided in 2007 to expand benefits to victims' families for another three years. From 2005 through 2010, Sandler O'Neill advised on more bank and thrift mergers than any other firm, working on 190 transactions worth a total of more than $69.5 billion. The firm is also an active equity underwriter, and has recently underwritten equity offerings for big-name clients such as Citigroup, E*TRADE, PNC Financial, and Primerica. It currently employs 341 people.