David Heike, senior v.p. and head of asset-backed research at Lehman Brothers, is moving to become the firm's chief U.S. credit strategist, a slot regarded a top bond market research role on Wall Street. Heike will spearhead the firm's recommendations on corporate bonds, credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations.
The top U.S. credit research slot at Lehman, which for the last two years has been the top-ranked firm in the Institutional Investor All-America Fixed-Income Research Poll, is one that well-known research veterans such as Jack Malvey and Glenn Reynolds have previously held. Malvey is now the chief fixed-income strategist at Lehman, while Reynolds was a co-founder of independent research outfit CreditSights in 2000. The spot has been vacant since Mark Howard left Lehman last spring to become global head of credit strategy at Barclays Capital. Shortly after, Barclays also hired Robert McAdie from Lehman as global head of credit strategy.
Heike, who began the new job last week, is no stranger himself to the II awards, having taken the top spot in the ABS/Other category in last year's awards. He's been at Lehman in ABS research since 1998 and has headed the team since early 2003. In also taking over as head of CDO research, Heike is assuming a spot open since Sunita Ganapati left earlier this year to run a proprietary CDO trading book at Wells Fargo (BW, 5/30). The ABS research duties at Lehman will be assumed by existing members of the team going forward, Heike said. He now reports to Michael Guarnieri, global head of credit research at Lehman.
