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Whispers

People Moves

Ruben Cohen joined Putnam Lovell's securitization team last week as a managing director in the capital markets group, reporting to Bill Henson, head of capital markets. Cohen previously ran the structured finance group at Bankers Trust Co.

Separately, Putnam Lovell, known for its presence in the 12B-1 and distributions finance sectors, plans to move into new asset classes going forward. The initiative follows a $25 million equity investment in Putnam Lovell by Quebec's Caisse de Depot et Placement, providing the excess capital for the investment bank's new ventures.

Jordan Bria joined the conduit management services group at Deutsche Bank as an associate, reporting to Karla Leonffu, a vice president in the group. Bria moved over from the conduit administration area at Chase Securities.

Joe Soave recently joined Credit Suisse First Boston as a vice president in the conduit group, reporting to Hans Bald, a director at CSFB. Soave came from from IBJ, where he was a vice president in structured finance group.

Josh Anderson starts today as a vice president in the ABS research group at Merrill Lynch & Co., moving over from the company's buyside affiliate, Merrill Lynch Asset Management, based in Princeton. Anderson worked at MLAM for five years, concentrating on asset-backeds. In his new research capacity in New York, Anderson will take a generalist approach to ABS, covering all products, splitting his time equally between real-estate and non-real-estate related ABS. He will be reporting to Dan Castro. "Josh will concentrate wherever the volume is," Castro said.

Last week Prudential Securities announced the hire of Liz Padova, who will spearhead the firm's credit card and revolving structures efforts. Padova came over from Bear Stearns, where she was a vice president with the credit-card team.

Miscellaneous

Rating agency Fitch has placed subordinate bonds from an Amresco home equity mortgage-backed securities transaction on Rating Watch Negative status, citing losses that have reduced over-collateralization and high delinquencies on the deal. Cumulative losses are equal to 2.17% of the deal, Fitch said. The affected bonds are Amresco Residential Securities Corp.'s series 1998-1 BBB' rated class B1-F and BBB-' rated class B1-A bonds, which are backed by adjustable rate home equity loans.

CMS Energy Corp. subsidiary, Consumers Energy, has filed with the Michigan Public Service Commission for rights to begin a $473 qualified costs securitization.

Conseco Inc. recently announced that it has sold its bank card portfolio to a division of Wells Fargo and Co. for approximately $400 million. However, Wells Fargo said in published reports that it does not plan to securitize the portfolio.

Moody's Investors Service issued a report dealing with the mixed impact that e-business on the Internet and automated mortgage underwriting may have on the credit ratings of mortgage-backed securities. Moody's finds that mortgage scoring may be inconsistent and have disadvantages, one being that many systems arise from building models based on mortgage performance data from good economic times.

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