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Baird appoints Moelis MD for new capital advisory team

The mid-market investment bank has appointed a 10-year veteran of Moelis & Company to co-lead the New York-based advisory unit.

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Mid-market investment bank Baird has formed a capital advisory team whose mandate includes secondaries.

The Milwaukee-headquartered group has hired Gavin Kolt as managing director and head of equity capital advisory, according to a statement. He joins head of debt capital advisory Anne-Marie Peterson at the top of the New York-based team.

The capital advisory group will assist corporates and sponsors with analysing and optimising their capital structures, structuring and raising debt and equity, providing liquidity to shareholders and recapitalising balance sheets, the statement said.

This includes advising on secondaries transactions, a spokeswoman confirmed.

Kolt joins Baird from Moelis & Company, where he was a managing director. Among the deal types he worked on at Moelis were single-asset and multi-fund recapitalisations, the statement said.

“We are thrilled that Gavin has decided to join Baird and help us continue to expand our capital advisory expertise and capabilities,” said Brian Doyal, co-head of Baird’s global investment banking business. “His deep knowledge and transaction experience with equity and equity-linked transactions will be a great compliment to our already strong debt advisory capabilities.”

Kolt was at Moelis for 10 years, according to his LinkedIn profile. Prior to that he spent close to a decade with Merrill Lynch as a director.

The capital advisory group is also in the market for a Chicago-based vice-president, according to a job ad.

Baird advises corporations, entrepreneurs, private equity and venture capital firms across M&A, debt and equity. Since 2016, it has completed more than 580 advisory transactions representing nearly $175 billion in transaction value and 370 financings worth $132 billion, it said in the statement.

Morgan Stanley, Jefferies, Rothschild & Co and Goldman Sachs are among the groups to have made a push into the secondaries advisory space over the past year in line with an anticipated record year for transaction volumes, Secondaries Investor has reported.