By Svea Herbst-Bayliss

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Two Wall Street bankers are joining Jasper Street Partners to build the firm’s practice helping clients defend against activist investors by identifying vulnerabilities, navigating proxy contests and managing public pressure campaigns.

Duncan Herrington and Peter da Silva Vint, who worked as activism-defense bankers most recently at Moelis and Barclays respectively, are spearheading the new business, Jasper Street executives told Reuters.

Herrington and da Silva Vint will be managing partners and join founders Robert Main, Jessica Wirth Strine, Marc Lindsay and Amy Hernandez Slowik, former Vanguard executives.

Started in 2020, the firm, which this month changed its name from Sustainable Governance Partners, was conceived in a coffee shop on Jasper Street in Media, Pennsylvania, and has offices in Pennsylvania and New York.

“As the gray space between economic activism and issue activism continues to converge, we see huge potential for an adviser that can cross all of that terrain,” Strine told Reuters.

Herrington, who trained as a lawyer before entering banking, left Moelis over the summer and previously worked at Raymond James Financial. Da Silva Vint, who also holds a law degree and an MBA, worked at Moelis, overseeing governance at portfolio companies for BlackRock and, most recently, at Barclays.

The two men reunite at Jasper Street as demand picks up from companies facing agitators like Carl Icahn and Nelson Peltz as well as other interests like unions. A record number of activist campaigns were launched in the first half of the year including at Southwest Airlines, JetBlue and Walt Disney.

Jasper Street expects to form relationships to provide year-round “offense” and “defense” support, Strine said, not just crisis services.

Competitors include big banks like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan and independent firms such as Spotlight Advisors and Strategic Governance Advisors.

(Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)