Hiring Push.

Michael Gardner, head of the capital markets group at downtown Los Angeles-based Wedbush Morgan Securities Inc., has hired 25 bankers and researchers in the past six months, and has another six or seven coming aboard in the next several weeks.

Why the luring, push? Like other investment bankers, Gardner is finding fertile soil in the world of private placements.

With many entrepreneurial companies needing to raise money quickly, particularly in the frenetic get-into-the-space-first worlds of the Internet and computer software, a public filing or IPO can take too much time. As a result, many investors and institutions have become hip to the advantages of owning stock in a company even before it goes public.

Here's a case in point: Wedbush just arranged a $25 million infusion of private capital for Huntington Beach-based Sentio Corp., which is developing software for online search engines.

The deal reflects a broader move by investment bankers to act more like venture capitalists and shovel money onto a promising company's doorstep earlier.

"You have a better chance to handle an IPO or a merger assignment if you have already established a relationship with the company in an earlier private placement," said Gardner.

Usually, Gardner and his troops line up capital for a client, but Wedbush does operate its own merchant banking fund known as E Capital that's run by family scion Eric Wedbush and Jeffrey Bland. "They have invested in some of the deals we have brought to them," said Gardner.

Additionally, Wedbush has agreed to begin offering private placements online through Clay Womack's Direct Stock Market Inc., based in Santa Monica.

Along with bankers and researchers, Wedbush has been hiring stockbrokers. "The additional brokers are warranted by the increased amount of investment banking we are doing," said Gardner.

In other words, there is more product to sell, and that takes more salespeople.

Wedbush recently hired Andrew Duncan to handle investment banking assignments in consumer products and financial services; Christopher Jay Park to help sell underwritings through Wedbush's syndication department; Chad Suggs to handle investment banking in biotech; and Anne E. Thompson to deal with banking assignments in entertainment and media, and to serve as vice president of research sectors.

Benjamin Mark Cole writes about the local investment community for the Los Angeles Business Journal.