Christopher St. James
Vice President
chris.stjames@ricefin.com

As a municipal underwriter and financial advisor, Chris St. James has participated in the issuance of more than $100 billion in taxable and tax-exempt bonds. His financing experience includes a broad range of municipal obligations, including general obligation bonds; revenue bonds; lease revenue bonds and certificates of participation; transportation issues, including ports and airports; water and sewer issues; public building financings; and other infrastructure projects.  Mr. St. James has numerous high profile client relationships spanning more than 15 years, including the State of California, Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, Bay Area Rapid Transit, East Bay Municipal Utility District, Alameda County, the Port of Oakland, and the cities of Oakland, Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco.

Mr. St. James brings extensive quantitative analysis expertise to his role as a general infrastructure banker.  Since 1990, he has served as both a “relationship” banker and a “technical” banker, providing new money structuring and refunding analyses and debt portfolio analysis for municipal issuers in California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona and Nevada. He has experience with virtually every type of municipal structure and credit enhancement, including conventional short- and long-term fixed rate and variable rate bonds, auction rate securities, interest rate swaps, letters of credit, and bond insurance.

Before joining Rice Financial in 2007, Mr. St. James worked for Jackson Securities and was responsible for developing that firm’s West Coast public finance practice.  Before that, he spent 10 years with Ramirez and Co., where he modeled and monitored the debt of key West Coast clients, identifying unsolicited refinancing and other structuring opportunities.  In an earlier position, Mr. St. James worked as a managing director for Charles A. Bell Securities Corp., where he developed and managed that firm’s investment banking and financial advisory practice. His 28 years of experience in the securities industry also includes six years in retail and institutional sales. 

Mr. St. James earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of California.

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