Joseph Culley

Joseph D. Culley Jr. is Head of Capital Markets Group at Janney Montgomery Scott LLC and a member of the firm's Executive Leadership Team. In that role he oversees Janney's Equities, Investment Banking, and Fixed Income business units, and chairs the firm's Equity and Fixed Income Commitment committees. He joined Janney in 2000 and, before being elevated to run the full Capital Markets Group, served as Head of Equities and Investment Banking.

Culley has been a central figure in Janney's expansion of its capital markets franchise through acquisition. Janney acquired HighBank Advisors, a Baltimore-based middle-market investment bank and financial advisory firm, in May 2018, and in June 2019 completed the acquisition of FIG Partners, an Atlanta-based investment bank and research firm focused on the financial-institutions sector. Culley previously served as Chairman of FIG Partners.

He earned a B.A. in Economics from Swarthmore College. Beyond Janney, he has served on the boards of industry bodies including the American Securities Association, Equity Dealers of America, and the Philadelphia Securities Association, and is active with nonprofits such as the Philadelphia Children's Alliance and St. Thomas' Episcopal Church, Whitemarsh.

Culley speaks publicly on dealmaking and post-merger integration, emphasizing that acquiring professional-services businesses is fundamentally about retaining people rather than acquiring assets. As he has put it, *"When you're acquiring a professional services business, it's really about the people. You're not really acquiring much in the way of assets,"* and *"Preserving the relationship strength between the two parties is really important in a people-oriented business like investment banking."*

• Operates at the firm/institutional level as head of Janney's Capital Markets Group — equities, investment banking, and fixed income — rather than as a personal angel/seed investor.
• Focus areas reflect Janney's franchise: financial institutions, middle-market companies, and capital-markets advisory (underwriting, M&A advisory, research, trading).
• On acquisitions/integration (his stated dealmaking philosophy): *"You basically have that time-based retention period to win on culture… the returns of these transactions look fantastic if all of the key production stays beyond the mandatory retention periods."*
• On owning outcomes: *"As an adviser, you get used to giving advice to clients. And then when you start to run businesses, you have to own your advice more frequently, and that's a hard transition to make."*
• No publicly documented personal seed-stage thesis, check size, or startup-investment criteria.