Knights Capital Group hired veteran asset-backed securitization (ABS) analyst Ronald Thompson as its global head of ABS strategy. The move is indicative of the firm’s desire to increase its focus on it securitized products in the US and Europe. The development also echoes the recent flight of analytical talent away from European investment banks. Former analysts are migrating more and into consultancy roles on the sell-side and buy-side trader positions. Ronald Thompson is a well-known secondary market analyst, having spend the last eight years at the Royal Bank of Scotland penning research reports on the secondary market. “We intend to further leverage our intellectual capital to enhance the products and services we deliver to clients as Ron helps us build out our ABS/MBS strategy and analytics platform to support sales and trading,” said Ronak Khichadia, Managing Director, Global Head of ABS/MBS sales and trading at Knights capital. “We are growing our platform globally to meet the opportunities, and strategy will play a key role in helping us expand our franchise across the structured markets,” he adds. Knight Libertas is an institutional fixed income broker-dealer, with offices in Jersey City and London, where Thompson is based,that operates across a broad range of fixed income securities. “Knight Libertas already boasts extensive research and strategy capabilities in other fixed income arenas, namely High Yield and Emerging Markets,” said Thompson. “The ABS/MBS sales and trading groups in the U.S. and Europe have quickly established themselves as core trading counterparties, and they intend to add to that strength with a build out in analytics and strategy.” Write to Jacob Gaffney. Disclosure: the author holds no relevant investments.