Incapital to buy Bank of America's LaSalle Broker Dealer Services Division

By Devika Patel and Jennifer Lanning Drey

Knoxville, Tenn., and Portland, Ore., Feb. 11 - Incapital LLC said it entered into a definitive agreement with Bank of America to acquire LaSalle Broker Dealer Services Division.

The transaction will merge two retail corporate bond platforms: InterNotes, managed by a joint venture between Banc of America Securities and Incapital, and Direct Access Notes or DANS, previously managed by LaSalle.

By merging the marketing and sales efforts of the two platforms, Incapital will be able to provide customers with a broader selection of products and more of a one-stop shopping experience, Incapital president and chief executive officer Tom Ricketts said Monday.

"It just provides a better product set every week for advisers to chose from," he said.

Ricketts said that with corporate bonds being viewed as a good value and the equity markets remaining choppy, investors are beginning to expand out the yield curve and take advantage of attractive yield levels on corporate bonds, U.S. agency securities and certificates of deposit.

"The market right now is extremely interested in fixed-income products," the CEO said, though he was unwilling to project the level of volume growth the firm would see following the acquisition.

The acquisition is expected to close in the first quarter.

"This acquisition fits with Incapital's mission to make it easier for individual investors to participate in the heavily institutionalized fixed income marketplace," Ricketts said in a press release. "Corporate issuers, broker-dealers and individual investors will each benefit from the synergies created by combining the operations, technology and client services of Incapital and LaSalle Broker Dealer Services Division."

Incapital does not currently have plans for future expansions of a comparable nature, but the firm is "always open to new ideas," Ricketts said.

Chicago-based Incapital is a securities and investment banking firm.

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