Piper Sandler is the product of a July 2019 merger between the investment banking firms Piper Jaffray and Sandler O'Neil. Piper Sandler operates through five main units: investment banking, public finance, institutional equities, fixed income, and private equity strategies. Headquartered in Minneapolis, the firm serves middle-market corporations, private equity firms, government entities, and institutional investors. It operates more than 50 offices across the U.S., and offices in London and Hong Kong. Services include advisory, public finance, capital markets products, and institutional equity and fixed income sales and trading. Today it has more than 1,500 employees and is led by Chad Abraham, its chairman and CEO.

Piper Jaffray’s history can be traced back to 1895, when it established a commercial paper brokerage in Minneapolis, servicing grain elevators and milling businesses. Following subsequent mergers, the firm’s shares debuted on the NASDAQ exchange in 1986; in 1992, the firm name was trimmed to Piper Jaffray Inc. A $730 million acquisition by U.S. Bancorp in 1997 marked the end of Piper Jaffray’s independence, but the tie-up was short-lived: in 2003, Piper Jaffray spun off, becoming an independent public company. Another restructuring came in 2006 when Piper Jaffray sold its private client business to UBS for $510 million.