Vertical Crossings has hired Ken Clisham to be a senior relationship manager for its institutional structured product accounts. Patrick Downes, the New York firm's president, says Clisham, who joined several weeks ago, will be a managing director, and is in a new slot. He is a mortgage-backed securities market veteran, who had been a senior pass-through trader at Merrill Lynch, Greenwich Capital Markets and Chase Securities, and had worked with Downes at GCM, when Downes was head of that firm's collateralized mortgage obligation sales effort in the late 90s.
Prior to joining Vertical Crossing, Clisham had been head of trading and sales for its main e-trading rival, Visible Markets, which shuttered in late August (BW, 8/26). Downes says Clisham's hire is part of a broader growth strategy, aimed at increasing pricing transparency, and thus trading liquidity, in the CMO markets after Sept. 11, when several inter-dealer pricing screens were shut down. To this end, Downes says the firm has purchased some of Visible Markets' technology assets at a recent auction, and is in the process of bringing on additional staff.