If you’ve ever worked anywhere in the servicing or secondary markets side of the mortgage business for a period of time, you likely have come to know who Laurie Goodman is, even if you’ve never actually met her. The weekly “The Mortgage Strategist” publication she co-founded more than 15 years ago became a must-read for industry movers and shakers, and it also helped propel UBS to the forefront of the heap of sell-side research on Wall Street in the area. With Zurich-based UBS folding up its mortgage research and trading desks recently, along with the publication she led, Goodman will be moving on to Austin-based Amherst Holdings, LLC, a well-known holding company for businesses focused on the mortgage sector. She will join the company’s New York office in early December as senior managing director and will lead the company’s research, risk management and business development efforts, according to a press statement released Wednesday afternoon. “The partners of Amherst are thrilled to have Laurie join the firm,” said Sean Dobson, CEO at Amherst. “As the most accomplished analyst within residential mortgage-backed securities, her expertise will greatly enhance our abilities to service institutional investors in the key areas of strategy and risk management.” Here at HW, we don’t usually run quotes like the above, because they’re often fluff; in Goodman’s case, however, they’re absolutely true. For her part, Goodman said that her decision was motivated by a Amherst’s recent capital raise, and by a fundamental shift in market dynamics. “With primary dealers reducing their commitment to the residential mortgage market, the investment community is shifting to specialist firms,” she said. On the surface, it appears she’ll also fit right in at the boutique shop — relative to UBS, at least — given Amhert’s focus on strategy and analytics. Through a suite of operating companies, Amherst offers brokerage and consulting services to institutional investors in U.S. fixed income with an emphasis on residential mortgages and their derivatives. For those that aren’t aware of Goodman’s track record: She has been the top ranked mortgage strategy and agency structured products analyst for the past 11 years, according to Institutional Investor, and #1 in non-agency structured product for 10 of the past 11 years. In fact, she has more #1 rankings than any other analyst in the history of the Institutional Investor fixed income polls. (That’s not an easy thing to do.) Goodman was head of the securitized products research group at Paine Webber prior to the UBS-Paine Webber merger; before joining Paine Webber, she was vice president and head of MBS strategy at Merrill Lynch & Co. She has also held positions at Eastbridge Capital, Goldman Sachs, Citicorp and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Write to Paul Jackson at [email protected].