A banker and a lawyer walk into a bar … stop us if you’ve heard this one before … and launch a boutique investment banking firm.
That’s not exactly how Skyway Capital Markets was formed — but it’s close. (The firm technically dates back to 2002, when securities attorney Marty Traber founded it, initially to work with two clients.) After being dormant for more than a decade, Traber and investment banker Roger Overby rekindled Skyway in early 2017.
Traber, 72, is the firm’s chairman and boasts more than 40 years of experience in securities law and capital finance. He says Skyway’s business model is fairly niche, especially for the Gulf Coast region.
“There are companies like us in South Florida,” he says, “but once you get out of there, there aren’t too many like us.”
Skyway, he says, focuses on raising capital for fast-growing, middle-market companies in a wide swath of industries — firms that might not appear on the radar screens of bigger rivals like Raymond James. Skyway CEO Russ Hunt is well known in financial services circles for his tenure at Atlantic Merchant Capital Advisors, when he helped foment Achieva Credit Union’s headline-grabbing purchase of Calusa Bank. He’s also the son of the late Dick Hunt, a highly respected fixture of the local investment and banking sector.