George Canellos, the SEC’s former co-director of enforcement, has joined Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy as global head of the litigation department.
Canellos has worked for the law firm before. He will start his new position at Milbank in mid-March.
Canellos joined the Securities and Exchange Commission as a director in New York, the largest of the agency’s dozen field offices. He became a co-head of enforcement in 2012.
Earlier this month the SEC said that, among his accomplishments, Canellos had supervised legal actions against JP Morgan Securities, Credit Suisse Securities, RBS Securities and Bank of America for misleading investors in selling residential mortage-backed securities. So far these cases have resulted in $570 million in sanctions.
In addition, Canellos oversaw actions against financial institutions and senior executives for fraud and breach of fiduciary duty in the structuring and marketing of collateralized debt obligations. Those investigations targeted Merrill Lynch and UBS Securities, among others.
Canellos has also worked for the Department of Justice as head of the major crimes division for New York’s Southern District.
Winston & Strawn Lands Esoteric ABS Partner
Daniel Passage, a former partner in Bingham McCutchen’s structured transactions group, joined Winston & Strawn in the firm’s Los Angeles office.
Francisco Flores also joins Winston & Strawn as counsel to the firm, also from Bingham McCutchen.
Passage’s specialty is in structuring programs and transactions involving the origination, financing, and securitization off the run asset classes, including life settlements, premium finance loans, annuities, patent and trademark license royalties, trade receivables, automobile leases, sales contracts and dealer floorplan receivables, collateralized bond obligtions, collateralied loan obligtions, commercial and residential mortgages, reverse mortgages, credit card receivables, lottery receivables, structured settlements, solar leases, power purchase agreements, and PACE Bonds.
Flores will focus on structured products and cross-border transactions in Latin America.
Cantor Adds Sales, Trading Directors
Cantor Fitzgerald added two managing directors to its fixed income sales and trading team.
Paul Baeri will focus on distressed debt, leveraged loans, high yield and special situations. Kevin Quinn focuses on securitized and structured product sales.
Baeri was most recently with Global Hunter Securities, where he was cohead of high yield and distressed sales. He was a managing director on Gleacher’s high yield team, worked in loan sales and distressed trading at JPMorgan and was in fixed income trading with Goldman Sachs.
Quinn was most recently director for fixed income sales at Wells Fargo Securities. He has held positions with JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank, Citigroup, J.F. Lehman & Co. and PricewaterhouseCoopers.
JPMorgan Cuts Mortgage Products, Jobs
JPMorgan Chase is scaling back its mortgage products as the market cools.
The company plans to eliminate 22 of its 37 mortgage products and programs by the end of 2014, according to a Feb. 25 presentation to investors. It has already jettisoned 12 and plans to slash 10 more by the end of the year.
JPMorgan will also cut 8,000 jobs from its consumer and mortgage banking divisions this year. It attributed the decision to the refinancing slowdown.
On the block are JPMorgan’s partnership rewards program, non-agency relationship credit program and second lien home equity loan.
The company is “committed to the mortgage business for the long run” despite current challenges facing the industry, mortgage banking chief executive Kevin Watters said to scattered laughter during the presentation.
