New York, NY, November 27, 2017. Rosenblatt Securities is pleased to announce that the firm and its head of fintech investment banking, Vikas Shah, have been selected as part of the prestigious Institutional Investor Fintech Finance 40 ranking for 2017. Shah is No. 33 on the list of the world’s most influential players in financial-technology banking and investment, which II began publishing in 2015.
The exclusive accolade comes as Rosenblatt’s investment-banking business — launched nearly a decade ago as an extension of the firm’s groundbreaking work helping investors understand market structure and the exchange industry — reaches new heights. Rosenblatt recently advised Paris-based exchange operator Euronext, for example, on its acquisition of electronic foreign-exchange trading platform FastMatch.
“I’m honored to have been selected by II as part of such an accomplished list of financiers,” said Shah, who joined Rosenblatt in 2009 after stints in financial-institutions investment banking at Credit Suisse and corporate development at AIG. “I’m very proud of our team and the hard work they’ve put in to get us here.” Success in a high-stakes, relationship-driven business like investment banking is notoriously difficult for new entrants. It has been no different for Rosenblatt, which started as an NYSE floor brokerage nearly four decades ago and, more recently, helped pioneer the field of market-structure research. The firm has spent the better part of a decade working diligently to reach its position in fintech banking today, serving a wide variety of public and private financial-technology companies with their capital-raising and strategic-advisory needs. Its annual Financial Technologies Summit — launched in 2009, long before fintech became fashionable — is a must-attend event for industry professionals.
“We got into this business almost by accident about a decade ago, when a private-equity firm we came to know through our market-structure work asked if we could help find a buyer for their stake in an exchange,” said Joe Gawronski, Rosenblatt’s president and COO. “That opened my eyes to how we could leverage our industry expertise and relationships to help companies with their M&A and financing needs. It’s been a long road, but this honor caps a record year for our banking team and acknowledges our evolution into a boutique that has closed deals across a wide array of fintech sectors, from proprietary trading and robo-advisory to alternative-lending and capital-markets technologies.”
Here are some of Rosenblatt’s notable investment-banking transactions, by fintech sub-sector:
Exchange operators
- BM&F Bovespa’s strategic partnership with CME Group
- CBOE and BATS IPOs
- Purchase of a pre-IPO stake in BATS by TA Associates and Spectrum Equity
Automated proprietary trading firms
- Virtu Financial’s IPO
- GTS’ purchase of Barclays’ NYSE Designated Market Making unit
- Sun Trading’s acquisition of Toro Trading
- Voltaire Capital’s acquisition of fixed-income trading firm Caherciveen Partners
Personal finance
- Blooom’s Series B equity capital raise
Alternative lending
- Snapcap’s debt capital raise
Data, analytics and systems providers
- Thesys Technologies’ successful Consolidated Audit Trail bid
- Sale of AlphaMetrix’s technology assets
- Pico’s acquisition of Algospan
A complete list of transactions and more information about the firm’s investment-banking practice is available on its website, at https://www.rblt.com/recent-transactions
