In just five months in business, Loop Capital Markets has made its mark on LaSalle Street.
The black-owned investment bank was named a co-manager last week for a $425 million issue of general-obligation bonds by the City of Chicago.
Even before that, it had co-managed the underwriting of nearly $1.1 billion in municipal bonds and was a selling group member for almost $4 billion of bonds.
Last month, Loop was the sole financial adviser in a $105.3 million refinancing deal for the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority, which is expected to save the agency close to $12 million on the bonds issued in 1989 to build Comiskey Park, according to James Blakemore, the authority’s executive director.
The firm was founded by James Reynolds and Albert Grace Jr., who have been friends since the early 1970s, when they attended the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, where Reynolds played basketball.
Reynolds, who worked for Merrill Lynch for 15 years and last managed its institutional sales team in the Midwest, is president and chief executive officer. Grace, previously a vice president at Northern Trust Co., is chief financial officer and a managing director. Reynolds’ wife, Sandra, a former executive at First Chicago Capital Markets, heads sales.
The original Comiskey Park bonds, which carried a locked-in average interest cost of 7.83 percent, couldn’t be called before June 1999. Through a “synthetic refunding,” as Reynolds terms it, Loop was able to lower the interest cost by arranging what is called a “forward interest-rate swap” with Goldman, Sachs & Co. and Bear, Stearns & Co. First National Bank of Chicago provided an 11-year letter of credit for the life of the extended deal.
“They did a great job,” Blakemore said of Loop. “I got them because we knew of their long experience in the bond business and at the recommendation of one of the parties, First Chicago.”
Loop also has taken part in financing arrangements for the Chicago Park District, Chicago School Reform Board, Northwestern University, the Cities of New York and Philadelphia and Howard University in Washington.
“We started with six employees,” Reynolds said. “We’re now up to nine and expect to reach 11 by the end of the first quarter. We also hope to open offices in New York and Detroit by the end of summer.”
Retiring bankers: Two leading Chicago bankers who took Horace Greeley’s advice to go west are taking early retirement but plan to remain in their adopted city.
Marcus W. Acheson IV is stepping down at age 53 as executive vice president and head of Bank of America’s commercial-banking division in the Midwest. A native of Yonkers, N.Y., he joined Continental Illinois National Bank in 1976 after 10 years with Bankers Trust Co. and stayed here after Bank of America bought Continental in 1994. Acheson declined to reveal his plans.
Howard C. Morgan, who came to Chicago in 1981 to prepare the ground for an invasion by Citicorp, will retire soon as the New York bank’s senior Midwest executive and head of its private bank, which caters mainly to wealthy clients.
“I’ve become very involved with a number of not-for-profit organizations here, and I want to do more after I retire,” said Morgan, who is 62.
Bank notes: First Chicago NBD Corp. will hold its 1998 annual shareholders meeting May 8 in the staff auditorium at NBD Bank in Detroit.
LaSalle Bank FSB closed its branch office at 530 N. Michigan Ave. last week, due to the renovation of the Chicago Marriott Hotel, and is looking for a new location on the Magnificent Mile.
