People
John Wand, formerly head of the ABS group at Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. (MetLife), has moved on to another assignment, and is now in the Global Credit Research group. Charles Skully is now heading the ABS team.
FGIC announced last week that it has consolidated its mortgage-backed and other asset-backed securities business units into one Structured Finance organization. Greg Raab, the company's former chief risk officer, has been appointed managing director of this new organization. Prior to joining FGIC, Raab was employed by Fitch IBCA, where he served as co-head of the structured finance group and co-head for the taxable fixed-income securities group. John Chung will continue to lead the non-mortgage ABS business and will report to Raab, and Ken Rosenberg will lead the MBS business.
News
The renegotiated contracts that were agreed to by a group of 40 Credit Suisse First Boston fixed-income pros will not impact the firm's asset finance group, sources confirmed. Team leaders Joe Donovan and Greg Richter will be unaffected by the Wall Street Journal report that guaranteed pay packages for Frank Quattrone and Jack DiMaio have been changed to possibly save $400 million over the next three years.
Donovan and Richter, former Prudential bankers, had signed guaranteed contracts after previous heads Phil Weingord and Jorge Calderon jumped to Deutsche Banc for guaranteed contracts of their own, taking a majority of the team along.
Cincinnati-based Provident Bank is readying an auto-lease ABS for a December print, sources close to the deal said. This would be the first lease transaction of the year for the bank and only the third the embattled sector has seen all year. Further details, such as exact size and underwriter, were not immediately available. Provident sold two lease transactions in 2000, pricing $289.582 million of 2000-1 paper via Banc of America and $143.1 million of 2000-2 notes through Credit Suisse First Boston.
Barclays Capital, which has tried to raise its profile this year through an aggressive hiring campaign in a number of product areas, abruptly shut down its U.S. high-yield sales, research and trading last Wednesday. It laid off all 19 employees in the division.
Ratings
Standard & Poor's lowered its rating on RG Receivables Co. Ltd.'s $100 million notes to B- from B+' and removed the rating from CreditWatch where it was placed on Aug. 6, 2001.
While the transaction seemed to be headed for troubles prior to Sept. 11, the events that occurred on that date significantly impacted the transaction further.
The notes in the deal are secured by the credit and charge card receivables generated by the sale of airline tickets in the U.S. to Viacao Aerea Rio-Grandense SA (Varig) customers flying between Brazil and the U.S. The transaction is structured to capture off-shore U.S. dollar-denominated payments generated from the sale of tickets on Varig S.A. flights between Brazil and the U.S. and between the U.S. and Tokyo, Japan.
Standard & Poor's assigned a preliminary BBB+' rating to Banco do Brasil's Diversified Payment Rights Trust (DPRT) $300 million electronic wire transfer deal. This marks the first non-treasury, electronic wire transfer deal in Brazil and the third in Latin America. The preliminary rating reflects the credit enhancement levels, the transactions structure and the ability to pay timely interest and principal on the certificates.
Miscellaneous
ABN Amro began pre-marketing a E5 billion cashflow CLO, which is the largest visible cash CLO ever to hit the market, according to sources. Smile 2001 BV is expected to roadshow this week. The trade is backed by a pool of loans to small and medium sized companies.
Calendar
Postponed - Dec. 3-5: Palm Beach, Florida Commercial Paper will be presented by Information Management Network. For more information, visit www.imn.org.
Jan. 6-8: South Beach, Florida Commercial Mortgage Securities Association will host the CMBS Investors Conference. For more information call 212-509-7844 or visit www.cmbs.org.
Feb. 6-9: Phoenix, Arizona Information Management Network will host the seventh annual investors' and issuers' summit on Asset Securitization 2002. For more information visit www.imn.org.
Feb. 10-13: Scottsdale, Arizona The Strategic Research Institute will host the ninth annual Asset Securitization 2002 symposium, an investor and issuer forum. For more information, visit www.srinstitute.com.
Feb. 25-26: New York, New York - Information Management Network will present the fifth CDOs 2002: Brave New World. For more information visit www.imn.org.
May 14-15: Royal Park, Tokyo Japanese Securitization will be hosted by the Information Management Network. For more information, visit www.imn.org.
June 4-6: Barcelona, Spain Information Management Network will host the sixth annual Global Asset Securitization. For detailed information visit www.imn.org.
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