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Whispers

People

Eric Dunn, formerly a senior member of Banc of America's asset-backed group, recently retired, and has opted to sail around the world aboard his yacht, sources said. George Ellison continues to manage both mortgage and asset-backed securitization at BofA.

Kirkland & Ellis has added attorney Scott Gordon as a partner in its New York office. Gordon moves over from Clifford Chance Rogers & Wells LLP, where he had been for four years.

As many as five staffers have left the Enterprise Mortgage Acceptance Co. (EMAC) servicing unit at GMAC Commercial Mortgage (see ASR 12/3/01). Group head Betsey Vartanian left the team in late November, and it has since been said that three or four others who specialized in asset management left GMAC as well. The team was formerly part of Univest Financial Services, which was picked up by GMAC when it was acquired in January by McCracken Financial Software, a subsidiary of GMAC CM. Officials at Univest/GMAC did not return phone calls seeking comment.

Will Aguiar has reportedly joined Dresdner Kleinwort Benson to run the firm's surveillance group. Prior to Dresdner, Aguair was consulting.

Ratings

Deterioration of credit quality of the underlying portfolio is to blame for the latest negative action against notes issued by special purpose company Listore. Moody's Investors Service's downgrade of the notes to Baa2 from A3 will affect around JPY 1.2 billion of the leveraged credit-linked notes issued under the company, which is incorporated in Jersey, U.K.

Moody's Investors Service downgraded the EURO44 million variable redemption limited recourse notes due 2006 issued by Netherlands-based Helix Capital B.V. As a result of a credit event, the notes were lowered to Baa3 from Baa2 but deterioration in the overall credit quality of the reference pool continues to threaten the notes with further action. Helix Capital provides credit protection on a portfolio of investment-grade credits via a credit-default swap.

Stars No.1 Plc was on the chopping block again. Moody's Investors Service placed GBP57.8 million Class A notes on review for possible downgrade. The program is currently rated Aa1 following a previous downgrade which the MBS transaction suffered in 1991. The latest action stems from the downgrade of Royal & Sun Alliance Insurance Group Plc, which provides the majority of the credit enhancement available to the notes.

On Moody's downgrade rampage was BNP Paribas' synthetic static CDO, Riveria Finance 1, which had three tranches lowered as follows: EURO30million Class A to Aa1 from Aaa; EURO35million Class B to A2 from Aa3; and EURO20million Class C to Baa3 from A3. The class C and B notes were downgraded in October by Standard & Poor's.

Miscellaneous

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has filed a $100 million claim against California boutique firm Coast Partners for its involvement with First National Bank of Keystone, a fraud-linked bank failure that cost the FDIC more than $500 million. Coast brought securitization technology to Keystone, the FDIC says.

Calendar

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.

To have your event included in this section, please fax information to 646-822-4920, or, alternatively, e-mail Colleen Corrigan at colleen.garry@tfn.com

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