Matthew Eastwick has turned his back on Wall Street. After more than 15 years working with financial giants including Credit Suisse Group, Deutsche Bank Group and Merrill Lynch & Co., the 39-year-old banker is taking his skills in the corporate bond arena to Aladdin Capital Holdings, a Stamford, Connecticut–based investment management firm with assets of $14.7 billion as of January 31. As head of its newly formed debt capital markets group, Eastwick wants to tap the surge in U.S. corporate debt issuance — which hit $411 billion in the first quarter of this year, nearly double the total in first-quarter 2008, according to Bloomberg — as U.S. companies seek alternative forms of long-term financing. “The level of activity has never been greater, and yet due to consolidation of the sector, there are fewer large banks out there doing the business,” he notes. Eastwick is just one in a wave of senior bankers who have walked away from Wall Street to help independent broker-dealers and investment firms develop institutional services that were almost exclusively the domain of bulge-bracket banks.
