By Scott Malone
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Investment bank Keefe, Bruyette & Woods would consider an initial public offering if it needed to raise funds for an acquisition, the company's chief executive officer said on Wednesday.
"If there was a compelling need to do an acquisition, I think that obviously having a public currency would be a benefit and might be a catalyst for us to change our minds," KBW CEO John Duffy said at the Reuters Banking Summit in New York.
"We talk about bank stocks, insurance stocks, brokerage stocks and finance companies every day, so I'd have to be lying to you if I said there wasn't a weekly discussion of that," Duffy said. "It would be like working in a restaurant and not talking about food."
KBW, which canceled a plan to go public in 1999, in recent years has watched other boutique investment banks, such as Greenhill & Co. Inc. (GHL.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), Lazard Ltd. (LAZ.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Thomas Weisel Partners Group Inc. (TWPG.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) pursue their own IPOs.
Shares of Weisel have risen more than 30 percent since their February IPO debut at $15, and closed unchanged at $20.85 on the Nasdaq on Wednesday.
"Valuations are the highest they've been for people in that sector and the employees own the firm and that's something we're very conscious of," Duffy said.
Greenhill shares closed up 55 cents at $65.32 for a price-to-projected-earnings ratio of 32, while Lazard shares closed up 10 cents at $41.72, for a forward P-E of 20.
But despite the attractive valuations, Duffy said that for the time being KBW sees little immediate need for an IPO. Continued...
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