O’Neill Sets Up Shop at Ranieri Partners

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NEW YORK CITY-Sandler O’Neill founding partner Thomas O’Neill is retiring from the company and joining Ranieri Partners, the company launched in 2007 by mortgage-backed securities pioneer Lewis Ranieri. Along with heading up two of Ranieri Partners’ financial services companies, O’Neill is also joining the investment committee of Ranieri Real Estate Partners, a commercial real estate merchant bank.

O’Neill will serve as chairman of the holding company of First Allied, a San Diego-based broker dealer, and he will also serve as chairman of Ranieri Partners Financial Services Group, a company recently formed to acquire and oversee money management and investment management firms. According to a release, O’Neill will play an integral role across Ranieri’s global business platforms, working with the firm’s funds and operating companies, drawing on the relationships and industry knowledge built over his career.

Ranieri notes in a statement that Sandler O’Neill became a leader in M&A and capital raising for the financial services industry in the years since its 1988 founding, and that O’Neill himself has been “a trusted colleague and a close personal friend of mine for much of that time.” O’Neill says in a release that now is “the right time to take advantage of the dislocations in a broad range of financial sectors and to present financial institutions with solutions that strengthen their operations. Given Sandler O’Neill’s leadership position in the sector, I am looking forward to working from time to time with my former colleagues.”

O’Neill’s Wall Street career dates back 38 years; he joined L.F. Rothschild & Co. in 1972 and became Managing Director of Rothschild’s bank service group in 1984. A year later, he joined the late Herman Sandler at Bear Stearns; the two cofounded Sandler O’Neill four years later.