Bay Crest Partners LLC, an independent institutional brokerage and boutique equity research firm specializing in equity and equity options trade execution, plans to add fixed income to its mix of services. The firm is adding a fixed-income trading team to provide sales and trading services in the credit markets, covering a variety of credit-related products.

Sean Rice, formerly managing director and head of product management, structured products at UBS Investment Bank, has been hired as the managing director of fixed-income trading, and will be responsible for building the team and developing the business. Bay Crest plans to add ten employees to the fixed-income division within the coming months.

There have been a slew of firms launching fixed-income operations recently. Rice explains why his firm is getting into fixed income now: "I think the market opportunity for Bay Crest is well understood, considering the 500 new entrants in this space." He adds, "For Bay Crest, which has an existing franchise in equity and equity options, this is a product extension for us and allows us to offer more to our client base."

"In particular, in the last month, non traditional fixed-income investors have been expressing an interest in the structured products space." Rice adds, "So, our natural client base is looking for coverage in fixed income."

"Our competitive advantage is around unified coverage of equities, equity options, credit default swaps, corporate bonds and structured products." He notes that investors are investing simultaneously in a companies' equities, equity options, CDS, etc. Bay Crest's goal is to offer relative value by offering complete coverage," Rice notes. Bay Crest is in the technology implementation process now, and plans to launch the desk in about six weeks. Most of the products will be voice brokered, but the firm is implementing a Bloomberg front end and a proprietary order management system, notes Rice.

Prior to working at UBS, Rice was managing director, head of product management and structured credit at Bank of America Securities, where he developed, staffed and implemented a product management function within the structured products business. Rice began working at Bay Crest two weeks ago.

Bay Crest Partners, which was founded in 1993, is independently owned and specializes in agency executions of blocks of equities and options for the institutional investor community. The firm's clients are generally large hedge funds as well as large asset managers.

As far as launching any other new business lines, Rice says, "This is the focus for now. If we see opportunities down the road, we will try to take advantage of them."