RBC Adding To New York Investment Bank Units

Royal Bank of Canada continues to make good on bullish hiring expectations for its U.S.-based operations, particularly its investment banking industry groups in New York.

Back in March RBC reported that its capital-markets division earned seven percent more than a year ago, and saw a 64 percent improvement from the fourth quarter due to higher trading revenue, new issue activity-particularly debt financings-and higher loan-syndication fees.

RBC had already added more than 100 bankers in the U.S., taking its stateside investment banking staff to 350. Bank officials attributed the significant net income rise was driven by higher trading revenue and strong growth in U.S. as well as Canadian investment banking.

Even before it reported first-quarter earnings this year, RBC was described along with Citibank and Standard Chartered Bank as most likely to hire in 2011. One financial news source characterized RBC as a firm that had "emerged as a dark horse" over the past year and a half or so, having quietly increasing headcount during 2010, continuing to do so this year, ultimately pulling in staff from competitors "who, just a couple of years ago, wouldn't have considered signing up."

The latest to join the frey: Joseph Carey, Doug Yablonski and David Nadelman were hired by RBC Capital Markets hired as managing directors to expand the company's U.S. investment-banking business in New York.

Yablonski boasts 15 years of mergers experience, including at Harris Williams and Bank of America. He will focus on industrials and diversified services, and aerospace, defense and government sectors within its mergers group.

Nadelman, is also a15 year industry veteran, in this case with loan capital markets experience. He hails from the Royal Bank of Scotland where he was most recently loan syndicate head. He will now cover various industries within RBC's loan capital markets group, including energy, power and utilities and infrastructure finance.

Carey, with more than two decades of investment banking experience, with Bank of America, Merrill Lynch and First Boston, among others, was hired from Stifel, Nicolaus & Co. to join RBC's exploration and production team within its energy group.

In March of this year eFinancialCareers.com reported on RBC's appointments of investment bankers Bill Detwiler, Paul Milcetic and P.A. Weiner as managing directors to expand RBC's U.S. investment banking business in the areas of entertainment, metals and mining, and financial technology and transaction processing.