New York securities firm Cantor Fitzgerald has bought Dolmen Stockbrokers and plans to hire at least 200 staff at its brokerage arm next year to take market share from rivals and grow in asset management.

Dublin-based Dolmen is the US company's first Irish acquisition, according to a statement today from Cantor, which is applying to be a primary dealer of government bonds in Ireland. Terms of the sale weren't disclosed.

"We are looking to be the Number 1 fixed-income dealer in Ireland in a relatively short period of time," Shawn Matthews, chief executive officer of Cantor Fitzgerald, the company's brokerage and investment-banking arm, said in an interview.

"We are still aggressively looking to expand. I can see us adding at least 200 people over the next year."

Cantor is hiring as other global financial firms shed more than 88,500 jobs this year. Mr Matthews said Cantor will offer fixed-income and equity underwriting, trading, wealth-management and pension services in Ireland as the country and its banks recover from the sovereign-debt crisis, returning to markets for the first time since the nation was bailed out.

Mr Matthews said Cantor sees an opportunity in the aftermath of the Irish housing bust through repackaging mortgages into securities to get them off troubled lenders' books.

"We are looking to go in there to solve part of that issue," he said. "I think the solution will come through securitizations of real-estate loans."

Cantor employs about 1,600 people worldwide, up from 1,400 last year, according to its website. It lost 658 of 960 New York staff in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Dolmen chief executive officer and co-founder Ronan Reid said Dolmen's pre-tax loss narrowed to €1.9 million in 2011 from €2.5 million a year earlier, while revenue rose 1 per cent to €12.4 million.

Revenue in the first 10 months of 2012 has already exceeded last year's total, partly on institutional demand for fixed-income services, he said.

Bloomberg