Stephens Cori Capital Grows

Stephens Inc.’s Stephens Cori Capital Advisors, which concentrates on Latin American investments and Hispanic-owned middle market companies, has brought on a Morgan Stanley veteran to support the developing division.

Maximo J. Blandon will work as a managing director of Stephens Cori Capital, working on Chinese-Latin American Markets.

Blandon previously worked for MSCI-Barra, a former public subsidiary of Morgan Stanley, where he was managing director within the finance department. Blandon also worked for more than 15 years with Morgan Stanley, spending some of that time as managing director of its global capital markets unit. Blandon is a graduate of the US Naval Academy and earned his MBA from Georgetown University.

Stephens Inc., the Arkansas-based middle-market investment bank, launched Stephens Cori in 2005.

With Stephens Cori, Blandon will work with Stormy Byorum, a New York-based senior managing director, on a six-banker team that focuses on corporate finance advisory work, including mergers and acquisitions, private equity investments, entrepreneurs, agented financings and restructuring in Latin American and the Hispanic US.

Middle market banks appear to be hiring even more bulge bracket pros as optimism continues to grow for the US economy. Recently, Leerink Swann dipped into the bulge bracket hiring pool when it took four Merrill veterans from BofA.  James Boylan will be named the firm’s head of investment banking. He will focus on biotech, pharmaceutical, medical device and healthcare services. Joining him are Bryan Giraudo, Tony Gibney and Mark Page.