"FBR didn't have the credibility the other banks did because of its size," [J. Brett Harvey] said. But he said Emanuel J. "Manny" Friedman, one of FBR's co-chief executives, went with him to Germany and persuaded RWE officials to let FBR handle the sale.

FBR managed eight company IPOs that raised $2.1 billion last year, making it the third-biggest underwriter, measured in dollars raised, behind Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse, and it has continued among the biggest IPO underwriters this year, according to Dealogic, a research firm that tracks deals on Wall Street. So far this year, FBR is ranked seventh, having managed deals that raised $1.09 billion.

It was the genesis of FBR's distribution system -- a network of small and mid-size pension funds, money managers and institutional investors around the country that profited handsomely from FBR's early deals. FBR's [Richard J. Hendrix] said many of these investors are overlooked when big Wall Street firms go on "road shows" to sell new stock in an IPO. He estimates that at any given time there are between 500 and 1,000 active institutional accounts at FBR. (The firm does business only with institutional clients and wealthy investors, as opposed to, for instance, Merrill Lynch, which has a sprawling network of brokers serving small, individual accounts.)