Solomon Partners' expansion efforts include growing FIG investment bank team

Solomon Partners LP, an expanding investment bank, recently established a financial institutions group that aims to dabble in bank M&A.

In mid-December 2024, the investment bank announced that it hired Arik Rashkes to build and lead the financial institutions group (FIG). Rashkes has over two decades of investment banking experience, most recently as cohead of US financial services and head of insurance at Houlihan Lokey Inc.

Over the past 10 months, Solomon Partners brought on four other investment bankers onto the financial institutions team, including three — Matthew Cornish, Juan Guzman and Faiz Vahidy — who worked with Rashkes at Houlihan Lokey. The hiring for the FIG team is likely paused for now, but Rashkes expects it to pick up eventually.

"Within two to three years, hopefully, we'll double," Rashkes said in an interview. "But obviously, I want to be very conservative at the moment because I want to make sure that we deliver and we execute."

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Much of the team's current expertise is in insurance, but it will also cover asset and wealth management, along with specialty finance. Solomon Partners' FIG coverage will focus on capital raising and sell-side M&A in the middle market, deals valued at $250 million to $1 billion, Rashkes said.

So far, the team has generated 12 engagements, two-thirds of which are insurance related, Rashkes disclosed. It also has one bank M&A engagement, which makes Rashkes optimistic that the team will gain more traction in the banking sector, he said.

One of the recent hires joining Solomon Partners' FIG team as a partner is Tannon Krumpelman, a former Evercore Inc. senior managing director. Krumpelman, who spent a large portion of his career as a depository investment banker at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., will assist with the firm's bank advisory, Rashkes said. At Evercore, Krumpelman secured several bank M&A advisory assignments, including working on the FCB Financial Holdings Inc.-Synovus Financial Corp. deal and the Brand Group Holdings Inc.-Renasant Corp. deal, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence data.

Rashkes understands there are many investment banks competing in the banking sector, and that companies such as Piper Sandler Cos. and Keefe Bruyette & Woods Inc. are well-regarded in the sector.

"It's very hard to be intentional and invest a lot of time and effort and people in ... a subsector that is so heavily banked and almost is being dominated by two or three institutions," Rashkes said of bank M&A advisory.

Still, Rashkes knows there is an expectation that a "new wave of bank M&A" is forming and would like his team to participate. He said the group will advise in the depository sector opportunistically and pick spots where it can add value.

"We are very well suited to creative situations," Rashkes said. "So, when there is a situation where it's not just cookie cutter, I think that that's where we thrive."

The only member of the FIG team not hired in the past year is Alex DeOteris, who was brought on in 2020. DeOteris focuses on specialty lending, financial services, private equity and fintech. The banker moved from Solomon Partners' fintech team to the FIG team, according to a Solomon Partners spokesperson.

The spokesperson added that the FIG team will work closely with the professional services group, which provides advisory services to human capital businesses including accounting, consulting and broker/dealers and advisory firms.

Jonathan Hemmert, who led Keefe Bruyette & Woods' broker/dealer and specialty advisory coverage, recently joined Solomon Partners to build the professional services group.

In recent years, Solomon Partners has been adding coverage verticals, and it now lists 13 sectors of coverage on its website. In 2016, the company, which was then called Peter J. Solomon Co. LP, focused on the retail and distribution, consumer products, healthcare, and media, entertainment, communications and technology sectors, according to a news release that announced the sale of 51% of the company to Natixis SA.

At the time of the combination, Solomon Partners had about 35 bankers, Solomon Partners CEO Marc Cooper wrote in an email to Market Intelligence. The partnership accelerated the firm's growth and significantly expanded its capabilities, according to Cooper.

"It's given our clients access to global advisory services and broader financing capabilities," Cooper wrote. "Plus, it has enabled us to bring on exceptional talent."

Since then, the firm has grown to more than 200 bankers, 40 of whom are partners or managing directors, and added areas of coverage including industrials, telecommunications, and software, data and analytics. Cooper has been intentional about hiring talent to build the firm into an investment bank that caters to all major industry groups, Rashkes said. He added that building out FIG coverage is a significant development.

"FIG is a sizable M&A market opportunity," Cooper wrote. "Adding Arik and his team to our platform allowed us to immediately add depth and breadth to serve clients in this critical space."