New unit plugged into capital through restricted securities exchange. Last week Green Drake Capital launched an investment-banking division called Aspenwood Capital to finance emerging growth companies. The New York-based broker-dealer says part of the incentive for joining the high-finance fray is the hunger among some of its high-wealth private clients for access to such deals.

“We believe emerging growth companies are an underserved market with unique investment banking needs,” says Steve Ossello, one of Golden, Colo.-based Aspenwood’s founding principals. “What differentiates us from the competition is the relationships we have with strategic institutional and high-net-worth investors accustomed to investing in smaller companies. In addition to providing early stage capital, these investors also offer strategic and advisory assistance to the companies in which they invest.”

Aspenwood will attempt to “raise capital for small-cap public issuers and select private companies interested in going public through a reverse merger,” according to a press release.

Ossello and his co-principals Reed Madison and Christopher Wrolstad come to Aspenwood from Denver-based reverse-merger specialist Keating Investments. (In a reverse merger, a private company merges with a public company that usually has neither assets nor liabilities, \to help the acquirer become a publicly traded company without the expense and time requirements involved in an initial public offering.)

Being part of Green Drake gives Aspenwood access to more than 200 institutional and high-net-worth investors who are members of the Restricted Securities Trading Network, a community of buyers and sellers of restricted securities and a creation of Green Drake’s Restricted Stock Partners. The members of the Restricted Securities Network have combined liquid assets of around $75 billion, according to Green Drake. –FWR

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