FTN Financial Capital Markets, formerly known as First Tennessee Capital Markets, has hired Charles Smart and Dhiren Toolsidas from Sandler O'Neill as senior v.p.s in its newly created quantitative research and structuring group. The two are part of what fixed-income trading chief Deke Iglehart calls "FTN's answer to our growing mortgage-backed trading and research needs." Smart and Toolsidas are based in the Memphis, Tenn.-based firm's New York office.
Smart and Toolsidas joined Sandler O'Neill in November (BW, 11/4/01). Smart, reached at his new office, says the pair left the rebuilding effort at the Sept. 11 devastated banking-oriented boutique because "they were going in a different direction from the quantitative and structuring things that Dhiren and I do." Toolsidas was unavailable for comment.
FTN has hired three other veteran MBS pros over the past year, Iglehart says. These are pass-through trader Paul Smiley fromChase Securities, collateralized mortgage obligation trading chief John Hanlon from Deutsche Bank and CMO trader Jeff Bohnsack from Countrywide Securities in Memphis. Iglehart does not anticipate further hires in mortgages but thinks the firm will hire opportunistically in corporate bond trading and sales. The firm's fixed-income division has 500 employees split between New York and Memphis.
A senior fixed-income official at Sandler described Smart and Toolsidas' departure as amicable. "Dhiren and Charles were heavily mortgage-related, and that's a business that we'll take a bit longer to fully redevelop." Prior to joining Sandler, the two worked at the online structured product marketplace Visible Markets (BW, 10/26/01), and before that, both were at Nomura Securities International until mid-2000, where Smart was the co-director of the MBS department.