Charles Citro joined the Morningstar Credit Ratings this week as managing director for commercial mortgage-backed securities ratings and analytics.
Citro is responsible for the rating agency’s CMBS ratings and other commercial real estate ratings initiatives, including the management and ongoing development of analytical staff, and development and maintenance of CMBS and CRE ratings methodologies, criteria, and models. He reports to Vickie Tillman, president of Morningstar Credit Ratings.
He replaces Ken Cheng, who has taken on a new, senior-level position as analytical project manager at Morningstar Credit Ratings.
“Charles is a skilled veteran with 30 years of experience across CMBS, CRE, structured finance, and credit ratings,” Vickie Tillman, president of Morningstar Credit Ratings, said in a press release “He is a great addition to our leadership team, with the experience to build our CMBS and CRE practice into a market leader, providing accurate and insightful ratings and analytics for investors.”
Most recently, Citro served as a senior managing director at Cushman & Wakefield, where he held a senior role within the asset surveillance group. Prior to that, he was a managing director at Macquarie Group, where he was responsible for credit decisions related to the origination of commercial real estate loans for the CMBS Desk. His previous experience includes serving as a managing director in the investment banking division of Goldman, Sachs, as a vice president and senior analyst for Moody’s Investors Service, and as a vice president and asset manager for Nomura Asset Capital Corp.
Citro holds a master’s degree in real estate from New York University and a bachelor’s degree in economics from Rutgers University.
Cheng is now responsibility for developing new ratings capabilities, including methodology and model development. Morningstar currently rates CMBS conduits and single-asset/single-borrower deals, and is considering additional products in the commercial real estate space.
In addition to his new role, Cheng joined the firm’s criteria committee and model governance group.
He continues to report directly to Tillman.
