New York – Soleil Securities Group, an aggregator and distributor of equity research, announced that it has hired a new head of institutional sales. The announcement follows other recent management changes at Soleil. StreetBrains, a competing aggregator and distributor of equity research, hired a head of sales earlier this summer.
Soleil announced today that Will McDermott had joined the firm as Head of Institutional Sales. McDermott joins Soleil from Wachovia Securities where he was head of institutional sales. Previously he was head of equities for W.R. Hambrecht, where he had also managed institutional sales.
The move follows Soleil’s appointment earlier this month of Vince Farrell as Chief Investment Officer. Farrell has extensive buy-side experience, most recently with Scotsman Capital Management, a value investor with $200 million in assets under management. Farrell was previously with Victory Capital Management in Cleveland.
Terry Gardner, who originally joined the Soleil platform as a research provider, was appointed President of the firm in May, transitioning duties from Paul Spillane, the previous CEO of Soleil. Gardner’s research firm, S-2 Research, provided primary research and due diligence for investors and corporate clients, building on Gardner’s experience as COO of equities at Deutsche Bank.
Meanwhile, StreetBrains, which, like Soleil, is a distributor of research appointed Robert Livingston as Director of Sales in June. Livingston was previously a VP at BNY Convergex, and a sales producer for Bloomberg Tradebook.
Soleil and StreetBrains are beefing up their sales organizations in parallel with Goldman Sachs Hudson Street platform and Merrill Lynch’s Open Minds platform, which also distribute third party research. BNY Convergex, meanwhile, eliminated its dedicated Jaywalk sales team earlier this year and assigned Jaywalk sales to its Westminster sales staff.