Andy Altahawi’s U.S. capital markets career began in 1994 on Wall Street and continued through his own investment bank until 2007. It is told here in the past tense, because that is what it is — history. What continues from it is judgment.
Prudential Securities — Senior Vice President, Investment Banking (1994–1998)
Mr. Altahawi entered the U.S. securities industry in 1994 at Prudential Securities, then one of the country’s most prominent full-service investment banks and a recognized force in U.S. equity and debt underwriting through the 1990s. As Senior Vice President in the Investment Banking division he led and supported public offerings, private placements, mergers and acquisitions, road shows, and structured corporate finance assignments through 1998.
During that period Prudential Securities was led by Wick Simons, the former Chairman of NASDAQ, as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Altahawi worked under Mr. Simons’ leadership through that chapter of the firm’s history, and his work placed him within a number of the headline equity offerings of the decade, including the Cali Realty IPO and its follow-on transactions, alongside a wide range of REIT, technology, and growth-company financings.
Adamson Brothers — Founder (1998–2007 as a broker-dealer)
In 1998 he founded Adamson Brothers, an SEC- and FINRA-registered broker-dealer (CRD #46684). It grew into a multi-office, full-service firm: equity and bond trading, options, mutual funds, market making, and a corporate finance practice spanning public offerings, follow-on offerings, private placements, and structured financings across technology, life sciences, real estate, financial services, energy, and industrial sectors.
Running a registered broker-dealer means living under examination — SEC and FINRA oversight, net capital rules, compliance systems, and the daily discipline of an industry where the rulebook is not optional. Nearly a decade of that shaped everything that came after: the respect for regulation, the insistence on documentation, and the conviction that a market only works when the paperwork is honest.
In 2007, ahead of the restructuring of the U.S. broker-dealer landscape that followed the global financial crisis, Adamson Brothers wound down its broker-dealer operations and continued as a specialized capital markets advisory firm — the form in which it operates today.
A clean record, on the record
Throughout its operation as a FINRA-registered broker-dealer, Adamson Brothers was never the subject of a customer complaint or a regulatory citation from FINRA or the NASD — a clean record across a decade of multi-office trading, market making, and corporate finance. Mr. Altahawi’s own registered career from 1994 was likewise free of customer complaints. His full regulatory history, including the 2018–2019 SEC Longfin matter resolved by consent without admitting or denying the allegations, is published in full at andyaltahawi.com/record — anyone weighing the firm’s name on a grant award is invited to check it.
What those years produced
A fragmented market, seen from the inside. Listing readiness lived with one firm, registration with another, exchange applications with a third, the capital raise with a fourth — each with its own clock, its own invoice, and its own version of the truth. That experience produced the conviction that guides the current practice: going public should be a disciplined, transparent, well-advised process, not a maze. See The Practice Today.
Why an award carries the name
The firm’s name could have been left in the archives. Instead it is planned as the name of the Adamson Brothers Award in Finance under Area I — so that years spent financing companies now finance students. It is, its founder believes, the best transaction the firm ever structured.