Citi Reorganizes Mortgage Group

Citigroup reportedly announced that Bill Beckmann has been appointed to create division for Citi's U.S. residential mortgage busines. The new unit will include origination, servicing and capital markets securitization execution. Beckman will still report to Carl Levinson, who now heads up the U.S. consumer lending group and to Jamie Forese,who is co-CEO of Markets & Banking. In an internal memo, Citi said that setting up the U.S. mortgage businesses in this way will improve their overall effectiveness and allow us to better serve our existing clients while providing greater value to our shareholders. In his new role, Beckman is expected to work closely with Jeff Perlowitz, the CMB head of global securitized markets, to see how to best allign Citi Residential Lending's origination and servicing functions with those of CitiMortgage. Mortgage origination activities of CitiFinancial, Citibank and Smith Barney branches will stay with those business entities, according to the same internal memo. Beckman and Perlowitz will head up Capital Markets analytics, risk management and execution across non-agency products. All other global securitized markets businesses will continue to report solely to Jeff. Beckmen will also work closely with Corporate Treasury in terms of its overall portfolio, capital objectives and required return hurdles.