SMBC Nikko Securities America, a member of SMBC Group, appointed Joseph A. LaVorgna managing director and chief economist.

“To add someone of Joe’s caliber speaks volumes about our dedication to our clients and to our commitment to hire top talent who broaden our team,” Yunson Du, managing director and head of fixed income sales and trading at SMBC, said. “This is one more building block in expanding our foundational expertise and enhancing the scope of services we offer institutional clients. Joe comes to us with solid experience as someone with gravitas when it comes to understanding the economy, macro and micro trends and economic policy. As we continue to build our Macro Rates product offering, we are excited, as Joe will anchor our macro research team, which will be a key component of this business.”

LaVorgna has spent more than 25 years in the financial services industry. He was most recently managing director and chief economist for the Americas at Natixis, where he oversaw the firm’s economic research effort in the region and managed a team of economists that analyzed trends in the equity, fixed income, foreign exchange and commodity markets. While with Natixis, he took a year away to serve at the White House as special assistant to the president and chief economist of the National Economic Council.

LaVorgna, seen regularly in financial media, has been a contributor for CNBC and a contributing opinion writer for The Hill. For more than a decade, he was also ranked as a top economist in the prestigious Institutional Investor All-Star Fixed Income Survey.

Before Natixis, LaVorgna spent 20 years with Deutsche Bank Securities in the global market division, where he was considered one of the leading Wall Street economists. Early in his career, he was with Lehman Brothers, UBS Securities and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.