People
Lord Securities has recently hired Orlando Figueroa, joining the New York office as a vice president, in corporate governance. Figueroa, who joins from law firm Loeb & Loeb, has more than 15 years of professional expertise in the areas of corporate governance, entity formation and project management.
Eknath Belbase, a former senior analyst at Andrew Davidson & Co., has left the company to work at Fannie Mae. He started work at the GSE last week.
Monoline insurer Financial Security Assurance Inc. (FSA) has appointed Joe Simon as its new chief financial officer, replacing John Harrison, who is retiring. Simons joins FSA from Intralinks, a technology company serving the financial markets, where he was CFO. Before working at Inralinks, Simon was CFO of TENTV.com, a provider of business-to-business video portals, and prior to that he was CFO of Cantor Fitzgerald.
Law firm Alston & Bird last week announced the hire of former Shaw Pittman partners M. David Krohn and Gary Roth. The firm has also hired Bianca DeGaudenzi, Melda Tisoglu and Margaret Bateman. Krohn will split time between Alston & Bird's New York and Washington offices. The rest will reside in New York.
CDOs
Bear Stearns has a five-year bullet $1 billion par synthetic static pool investment-grade CBO in the market, according to IFR Markets. While the deal has the usual +60A/3ML on the Aaa/AAA (M/S&P/NR) class, the Baa3/BBB- has a +425A/3ML offered spread, which may appear wide for triple-B's.
In January, Bear priced a Baa2/BBB- synthetic IG CBO tranche for Global Investment Advisors (GIA) at +300bp/3ML with 2.0% equity support counting the $4 million Ba2/BB tranche. Meanwhile, Harare has 3.25% equity support (but there is no Ba2/BB class below). GIA, however, is a managed structure, while Harare is static.
Banc of America Securities priced the Independence III $300 million SF CDO at +51bp/3ML (A/L 7.2y), right in the middle of triple-A price talk, according to IFR Markets. The triple-B notes cleared at the tight-end of 250-260bp/3ML (A/L 12y) talk. The CDO is managed by Independence Fixed Income Associates, which is ultimately owned by John Hancock.
News
The Belize Mortgage Company (BMC) closed the first Belizean mortgage-backed issue last week through boutique placement agent Artemis Global Finance. The $44.5 million issue carries an 8.5% coupon at 97.9 to yield 8.83% - 405 basis points over Treasurys, said Ian Macmillan, head of external financing at Artemis. The 10-year bond is split into a $40 million A tranche rated A2' and A' by Moody's and Fitch, respectively; and a $4.5m B tranche rated Ba2'/BB'.
Underwriters and broker-dealers in the MBS market were reportedly asked to join the fight against predatory lending by Jeffrey A. Perlowitz, chairman of The Bond Market Association's Mortgage and Asset-Backed Securities Division, at the association's annual meeting in New York. He said, however, that advocates of regulation should realize that there are limits to what secondary-market participants can do. Perlowitz, who is also managing director in the global taxable fixed-income department at Salomon Smith Barney, also emphasized that this assistance should be limited to actions that do not raise costs to other legitimate parties in deals. He stressed that the secondary market's limitations should be recognized when it comes to being held responsible for abusive loans.
The newly established American Securitization Forum has opened its membership to GSEs for the first time, said George Miller, vice president and deputy general counsel of The Bond Market Association, at the association's annual meeting. Miller added both the American Securitization Forum and the new European Securitisation Forum "go beyond dealers" and represent issuers, investors, legal and accounting professionals, rating agencies, guarantors, servicers, trustees, data vendors, and utilities. He also told attendees that the possibility of starting an Asian Securitization Forum is being discussed. However, the viability of such an entity is yet to be known.
Calendar
April 30: New York, NY Financial Research Associates LLC will present Synthetic CDOs: The Benefits, Structures, and Innovative Trends. It will be held at The Princeton Club of New York City. For more information call the customer service department at (800) 280-8440.
May 9: New York, NY Moody's Investors Service will host Moody's Auto ABS Briefing from 9:00am to 11:00 am at the Midtown Executive Club at 40 West 45th Street. For more information contact Vernessa Poole at vernessa.poole@moodys.com or 212-553-4796.
May 14-15: Royal Park, Tokyo Japanese Securitization will be hosted by the Information Management Network. For more information, visit www.imn.org.
May 15: New York, NY The Strategic Research Institute will host the 2002 Liquidity Alternatives in Private Equity at the New York Hilton. .
