U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray has hired an additional four mortgage-backed securities professionals for its New York office, bringing the group total to 14. Ken Clisham, Doug Conrad, Jimmy Lew and Bill Cameron all have joined the firm over the past several weeks, according to Mike Effron, head of fixed-income trading in Minneapolis. Lew, the sole trader of the four, joins from Ginnie Mae, where he was in charge of REMICS and marketing new products. Effron says Lew had been head of collateral trading at HSBC during the late 90s. Cameron joins from Prudential Securities' fixed-income group and will cover mortgage originators.
Clisham and Conrad come from Vertical Crossing, the sole remaining Internet-based MBS dealer, and will be senior MBS salesmen, according to Effron. Clisham was a "senior relationship manager" for VCross; in reality he traded and sold structured products, as well as marketed the firm's auction technology to prospective accounts. Conrad was a salesman at VCross. A call to Pat Downes, president of the firm, was not returned.