Craighead is a securitization veteran with more than 20 years in the business. He worked at JPMorgan for nearly 14 years and held the role of European head of ABS syndication and trading but left in April 2005 to run the European arm of US mortgage originator Countrywide Securities. Countrywide opened its European branch two years ago to distribute US product and was also expected to start originating non-US mortgages but never did.