Moelis Adds Investment Manager as Senior Advisor

Moelis & Co. has tapped John Grady as a Boston-based senior advisor. He will work toward expanding the firm's client relationships in the financial services sector.

Grady was most recently a managing director and head of new business development at Athena Capital Advisors, a Lincoln, Mass.-based investment management firm. Prior to Athena, which he joined in April 2008, he was a managing director at Lehman Brothers in charge of the firm's investment management operations in New England.

Earlier in his career, Grady worked at State Street Global Advisors [STT] for 14 years. At State Street, he was a managing director in the global private client division, a member of the parent company's executive operating group and chairman of State Street Bank & Trust Co.

"His deep knowledge of the financial services sector as well as his long-term connections within the New England business community will greatly enhance our client service and coverage," Ken Moelis, Moelis & Co.'s chief executive, said in a press release.

Outside of investment management, Grady is a member of the board of directors of the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies and the board of overseers at Brigham Women's Hospital. In addition, he chairs the investment committee of the board of trustees at Belmont Hill School, his alma matar. Grady, a former member of the Institutional Investors Senior Delegates Roundtable, received a BA from Boston University, where he was a volunteer coach of the women's ice hockey team.

Grady's appointment is the latest effort by Moelis & Co. to expand its financial institutions group. In January, the firm announced it hired John Sipp as a managing director focused on the insurance industry. Meanwhile, in October, Caroline Silver, the former vice chairman of European, Middle Eastern and African investment banking at Bank of America Merrill Lynch [BAC] and global vice chairman of investment banking and head of European financial institutions and restructuring at Morgan Stanley, joined Moelis & Co.'s London office. John Binnie, previously the head of diversified financials at Morgan Stanley and co-head of the banking and diversified financials group at Citigroup, became a managing director in the firm's New York office last summer.

According to Jefferies & Co., the global asset management, financial technology and broker-dealer sectors will see robust M&A deal activity this year. "While 2009 was a very volatile year for the industry, it also proved to be a very transformative one, setting the industry on a course to consolidate further in the post-Great Recession era," Aaron Dorr, a managing director in Jefferies' financial institutions group, said in a Feb. 22 press release announcing the results of the firm's "On The Road Again" study.

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