Firm Overview

From the beginning, Rice Financial has been a firm with a technical focus. Founder Don Rice, an engineer by training who later received an MBA from Harvard Business School, began his career in investment banking at Merrill Lynch in the 1980s, applying taxable fixed income interest rate swap concepts to the municipal markets. Don left Merrill in 1993 to form Rice Financial Products Company as a municipal derivatives boutique, and the new firm quickly became recognized among the most technically innovative companies in municipal finance, executing derivative transactions totaling nearly $30 billion in aggregate notional amount, none of which ever resulted in an unfavorable outcome for the client.

In the wake of the financial crisis, Rice Financial shifted its business model to focus on municipal bond underwriting, bringing many existing municipal swap clients into the business, then successfully launched several additional businesses, each one narrowly focused around the core principle of achieving a comparative advantage based on analytical talent rather than simply firm scale.

This approach to growth has served Rice Financial, and our clients, well. Today, Rice Financial is a participant in more than 10% of all infrastructure bond financings completed in the United States. Our institutional fixed income trading desk averages $10 billion in fixed income sales annually. Our service as a direct lender to HBCUs has extended to more than 40 schools, with many loans exceeding $100 million. Our institutional equity practice trades as much as 120 million shares a month. The firm’s Infrastructure Finance business has already made more than $1 billion available for investment in U.S. infrastructure projects. And our experience underwriting corporate bonds has grown to include bond financings for major clients like American Airlines, Continental Airlines, Diageo USVI and Convergys.