People
Michael Grupe and Kerry Vandell have joined the Advisory Board of the Center for Real Estate Enterprise Management (Centerprise). Centerprise is a non-profit real-estate related research and management training organization based in San Francisco. Grupe is currently the vice president and director of research for the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts, while Vandell is the director of the Center for Land Economics Research at the University of Wisconsin.
GE Capital has hired Phillip Bales as a vice president in the structured finance group. Bales came over from Bank of Nova Scotia.
Zhengyuan Lu has joined MBIA's CDO group as a vice president, reporting to group-head Lori Evangel. Zhengyuan moved over from Asset Guaranty Insurance, where he was a vice president in the structured product group. Before AGI, Zhengyuan was at PPM America, the investment management arm of Prudential UK, where he was responsible for building the private asset-backed portfolio.
Meanwhile, Mark Gold left Evangel's group at MBIA, moving to Credit Lyonnais, where he'll take part in developing the firm's CBO business.
Moody's Investors Service has added Andrew Kriegler to its asset-finance group. Kriegler, who is joining as a managing director reporting to Brian Clarkson, will have responsibility for developing structured finance business in Canada. Kreigler moved from Toronto-based Canada Trust, where he was responsible for managing the bank's liquidity position and developing its securitization infrastructure.
Moody's has also hired Chandra Gopinathan, who joins as an associate analyst. Gopinathan was most recently an Intern in the Fixed Income and Structured Products Division of Merrill Lynch Investment Management.
Paul Gex also joined Moody's as an assistant vice president. Gex was most recently a vice president at Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette. Gex will be reporting to Joe Snailer and Andy Silver.
Kenneth Wylie, Robert Aicher, Michael Goldman and Perry Shwachman joined the Chicago-based law firm of Sidley & Austin. They will be in a new group closely aligned with the firm's securitization, derivatives, regulatory, reinsurance and merger, acquisition and reorganization practices. Partner Richard Clemens will lead the group.
