Ticonderoga Securities, an institutional broker dealer, has launched a risk arbitrage desk focusing on mergers and acquisitions, which will be led by industry veteran Andrew Lefberg, formerly of Pali Capital.

Joining Lefberg will be Jeremy Stovall, also formerly of Pali.

The risk arbitrage desk will be fully integrated with Ticonderoga’s existing product offerings.

“With the addition of a risk arbitrage desk, our aim is to build a business that will become a significant part of Ticonderoga’s revenue stream while adding to our growing range of product offerings,” says Shawn McLoughlin (pictured), chief executive and co-founder of Ticonderoga.

The firm has also recently launched coverage in asset management, exchanges, market structure and e-finance, and homebuilding and building products sectors.

“M&A activity is increasing significantly from levels we’ve seen over the last three years,” says Lefberg. “It is on a trajectory to reach pre-downturn levels, and is even approaching the levels of the M&A boom of 2007, based on the amount of deals we’ve seen recently.”

Lefberg joined Ticonderoga from Pali, where he ran the M&A event driven desk since 2006. Prior to that, Lefberg was with Goldman Sachs from 2002 to 2005 and also spent time at Accenture (formerly Andersen Consulting).

Stovall was a risk arbitrage analyst at Pali for the last two years. He began his career as an analyst on a private banking team at Merrill Lynch.