Senior Management
Don Rice, Chief Executive Officer
Exceptional Focus and Expertise
As a senior managing underwriter, Rice Financial devotes all necessary resources to assist clients in reaching and exceeding their financing goals. With both a professional and a personal commitment to seeing clients succeed, every task we are assigned is undertaken with the thoroughness and attention to detail that are trademarks of our firm.
Our senior bankers have been trained at bulge bracket firms in analytics, credit, sales and structuring. Rice Financial was formed by bankers and salesmen who came from Merrill Lynch. Don Rice, CEO, recruited seasoned and highly analytical bankers from other Wall Street firms, then provided them a platform that capitalized on these talents. Together with our seasoned salesforce, whose members average 29 years* of experience and have long-standing relationships with major institutional investors and money managers, our platform results in highly competitive financing structures and interest rates.
At Rice Financial, you will be assisted by an experienced, hands-on banking team that holistically understands your credit, your goals, your system and your needs. This will allow us to present these factors effectively to the rating agencies and to investors.
Exceptional Diversity
At Rice Financial, our diversity initiative has been very simple—we exhaustively and sincerely seek out diverse candidates each and every time we hire someone. Further, our CEO personally approves every hire at the firm, and he does so through the lens of increasing our firm’s already outstanding record of diversity. This initiative and approval process has been in effect since our founding 22 years ago, and the results speak for themselves. Rice Financial has been and remains the industry leader in providing career opportunities for minority employees.
Our entire senior management team, including the CEO, the President of the firm and our lead underwriter, are African Americans. We have encountered our share of impediments in building our business over the years, and we enthusiastically support efforts to promote greater inclusion of small or disadvantaged businesses in the municipal finance arena.
*Calculated by adding the total years of experience of each sales desk employee obtained from professional biographies and averaging that number.