Two Irvine Investment Banks Join to Take On Larger Deals : Expansion: The new wholly owned division, L.H. Friend-Danzi Capital Partners, will gain five additional employees.
Two Irvine investment banks are joining forces to participate in larger financings, but both say they will continue raising capital for biomedical and other small technology companies.
Michael Danzi, president of Danzi Capital Group, an investment bank formed a year ago, is joining L.H. Friend, Weinress & Frankson Inc. and taking his five-person staff with him. Danzi will be managing director of a new wholly owned division called L.H. Friend-Danzi Capital Partners, company officials said.
The move will boost the number of employees at L.H. Friend, formed in 1984 by Larry H. Friend, from 40 to 45 people.
“Mike is a very talented guy. We hope to further the growth we’ve already seen at our company, and I think he could play a significant role in this, especially in expanding our business targeted at high net worth individuals,” said Friend, 58.
“He and his people are coming over here, but I’m not buying their company. Mike and I are just setting up a wholly owned subsidiary.”
Danzi, 34, a former corporate finance officer at Cruttenden & Co., an Irvine brokerage, left there in 1992 to form Danzi Capital and focus on raising cash for small companies. Danzi is a Harvard Business School graduate who was an investment banker at Drexel Burnham Lambert in Beverly Hills from 1987 to 1988.
“The combination of the two firms will make us a more potent force and better enable us to serve our clients,” Danzi said. “We didn’t have the capital base, though we did have the talent,” he said, to provide all the financial services needed by rapidly growing companies.
During 1993, Danzi’s company raised about $10 million for companies in several equity financings and handled a merger valued at $20 million, he said.
L.H. Friend participated in several major equity underwritings last year, serving as co-managing underwriter for a $30-million deal for Kaiser Resources Inc. in Rancho Cucamonga and an $85-million financing for United Gaming Inc. in Las Vegas.
Friend, a former partner with the investment bank Bear, Stearns & Co., helped build that company’s Los Angeles office from three people in 1970 to about 100 people in 1978. He has 35 years of experience in the securities industry.
