Investment Banking

W.R. Hambrecht & Co., the San Francisco investment bank founded by Bill Hambrecht, said Wednesday that computer networking giant Novell Inc. has taken a minority stake in the firm. The size and amount of the stake by Novell, made through its venture capital arm, wasn't disclosed. The investment is expected to help W.R. Hambrecht, formed in January 1998, fund its growth. The firm recently launched its OpenIPO system, an auction-based method of taking companies public on the Internet.

Former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul A. Volcker said Wednesday that he will become chairman and part-owner of James D. Wolfensohn Inc., a small investment banking firm in New York that advises large corporations. He will also serve part-time as a professor of international economic policy at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, where he will teach courses and advise graduate students. Volcker's decision to join a small company was unexpected.

EOffering Inc.'s research director, Gary R. Craft, has left the Newport Beach online investment bank for personal reasons after less than four months. Craft, 40, didn't elaborate Thursday on why he quit EOffering, which is 28%-owned by ETrade Group Inc., the No. 2 Internet brokerage. He joined EOffering April 15 after 2 1/2 years of researching Internet financial services companies such as CheckFree Corp. and Knight/Trimark Group Inc. for BancBoston Robertson Stephens.

BankAmerica Corp.'s plans to acquire California investment bank Robertson Stephens & Co. represents the first step in the financial giant's strategy to build a global investment banking operation and will also allow it to raise more capital for California businesses, analysts predicted. The San Francisco-based banking company said Monday it will buy Robertson, a leading investment banker for growing high-tech and health-care companies, for about $540 million in cash.

It was 1990, and Southern California's aerospace recession was biting down hard -- the region's first major business slump in a decade. Jim Freedman and his partners at regional investment banking firm Barrington Associates watched as their big East Coast counterparts packed up their L.A. outposts and left California, like refugees fleeing a famine zone. "Those were tough times," Freedman recalled recently in his Westside office. "We decided it was a great time to build."

Roaring merger activity and resilient trading revenue fueled strong growth in fourth-quarter earnings for the biggest U.S. investment banks, capping what may be a record year for Wall Street. Starting this week, four of the largest securities firms will report results for the quarter ended Nov. 30. Overall equities trading rebounded after a weak September, merger and acquisition activity was strong and fixed-income markets continued to defy skeptics predicting a slump, analysts said.

ING Group, the Dutch financial services giant, is selling the U.S. activities of its ING Barings investment banking unit to Dutch rival ABN Amro Holding for $275 million in a move that would mean the elimination of about 1,000 jobs. ING's New York-based investment banking business had barely been profitable, ING Vice Chairman Michel Tilmant said. The 1,000 job cuts include 500 in London and 200 in the United States, ING said. More than 1,300 U.S.

It was only a few days after federal agents arrested one of the top investment bankers at Kidder, Peabody & Co. Inc. that Townsend (Tad) Smith arrived from the University of Virginia at Kidder's Wall Street headquarters for his job interview.

Two Orange County investment banking companies that acted for awhile as if they wanted to merge now say they will continue to work together through a joint venture but have no intention of becoming one company. Larry Friend and Michael Danzi said their companies will work on major deals, like the effort to sell a minority shareholder's stock in the Irvine Co., through a division of L.H. Friend, Weinress & Frankson Inc. But Friend and Danzi said each company will continue to operate separately.

Two of the most successful veterans of California's investment banking community--Thomas Weisel and Bill Hambrecht--are entrepreneurs again, and they're shaking up the marketplace with their new ventures. Both men, Weisel, 57, and Hambrecht, 63, spent decades in San Francisco growing two of California's highest-profile regional investment banks, Montgomery Securities and Hambrecht & Quist.