Moody's Investors Service Managing Director Mark DiRienz is joining the commercial group at the rating agency, leaving his post as the managing director of the ABS team in the structured finance group (SFG).
With DiRienz moving over to the commercial group, Will Black has been promoted to team managing director of the U.S. ABS team.
In the newly created position, DiRienz will serve as a managing director of the Americas for structured finance business development. According to an internal company memo obtained by ASR, he will now be responsible for "initiating new transactions and deepening" Moody's relationships with existing customers, particularly in ABS and RMBS.
DiRienz will work closely with Bill May, who will focus on origination and building existing relationships in the derivatives, ABCP and CMBS segments as well as regulatory issues affecting the commercial group. Both DiRienz and May will interact with intermediaries, issuers as well as sponsors as they focus on identifying new opportunities for the rating agency's business.
Before assuming his current role, DiRienz was the managing director of the ABS team in SFG and was responsible for rating securitizations of various assets. He joined Moody’s in 1996 as a senior analyst on the ABS team and moved to the RMBS team in 2000. He then became a structured finance product specialist within Moody’s Analytics. He was promoted to managing director in 2005 and has led a number of teams within SFG over the past few years.
Before Moody’s, Mark held a number of investment banking positions in residential real estate finance and worked for 10 years at Deloitte & Touche.
Meanwhile, Black joined the Moody’s credit card team in 1998. Since then, he has made considerable contributions to the quality of the ratings and analysis of credit card ABS as well as the delivery of research and data to Moody’s clients, according to the memo.
Black has also led the creation of the Credit Card Data Bank, which offers investors with a centralized source of Regulation AB data, Moody’s research and performance information on the credit card trusts it rates.
In 2008, he started the publication of Moody’s Credit Card Statement, which is a bi-weekly newsletter that covers credit, macroeconomic, legal and regulatory developments impacting the credit card sector. Black is also a part of SFG’s grassroots outreach program and has authored several methodology reports about credit cards.
