People
Ralph Boynton, a pioneer in the hedge fund-backed collateralized fund obligation business, has found a new home at Parkway Capital. Boynton previously was a managing director at CFO issuer/ manager Ferrell Capital. Boynton says he will remain active in the structured products business.
Richard Sullivan has joined the Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein securitization team as a director of the London ABS group. He will work under Charles Hyatt, director and head of the London team.
Sullivan was previously on the securitization team at Societe Generale.
Patrick Livney, a senior member of the Asset Allocation & Management CDO team, has left the firm. Asset Allocation is known for its Diversified Asset Allocation Holdings-1 (the first visible ABS CDO via Prudential Securities).
Goldman Sachs' global head of synthetic CDOs, David Peacock, has recently joined Cheyne Capital in London. Peacock arrives at Cheyne in time to help the firm structure a $4.3 billion managed investment grade CDO that Morgan Stanley will lead.
Greenwich Capital announced last week that Joseph Accurso has joined the firm as a vice president responsible for the trading of GNMA and FHA project loans and securities backed by this collateral.Accurso reports to managing director and head of CMBS trading Christopher McCormack. Accurso joins the firm from Merrill Lynch, where he was a project loan trader for the past year. Prior to that, he was with Prudential Securities from 1994 - 2000.
News
Despite the latest turn of events in the guerrilla warfare in Colombia - with 117 people killed last week, including 40 children, after a rebel rocket hit a church where they were seeking refuge, as noted in the New York Times - Colombia saw its first mortgage backed securitization. The Colombian Titularizacion Company (TC), launched a $215 million MBS deal that features a guarantee from the Colombian government and the International Finance Corp. The bonds have also been given a tax-free status by the government.
The government established an institution in early 2001, similar to Fannie Mae in the U.S., which is intended to buy mortgages from banks, build up a portfolio and securitize it on the other end (see ASR 2/5/01).
The Colombian government began taking steps to boost the secondary mortgage market more than two years ago when it injected funds into the existing mortgage lending system with the intention of increasing the system's stability. The plan forced financial institutions to buy government debt reduction notes (TRDs), a five-year zero coupon instrument. The revenue is then provided to Housing and Savings Corporations (CAVs) for them to lend as mortgages.
German insurance regulators recently revised their stance regarding the investment in ABS and credit-linked notes. The revisions provide the industry with a legal framework that is expected to lead to more insurance companies starting to invest in ABS/securitized pools, said sources.
However, it is not a cut-and-dry legislation and still requires that a series of provisions be followed. Pools eligible for insurance collateral pool [Deckungsstock] must: be low-risk investments only; have an investment-grade rating from at least one rating agency; no leverage with respect to the repayment of the principal and interest; ABS and CLNs together can amount to a maximum of 7.5% of the insurance collateral pool; and ratings must be monitored at least once a year.
Servicer Fairbanks Capital Corp. announced last week that it had agreed to merge its platform with the CSFB-owned Olympus special servicing platform. No price or exchange ratio for the transaction was made public.
The Olympus unit, based in Austin, Texas, was acquired along with the purchase of DLJ and specialized in the servicing of subprime, Alt-A mortgages and delinquent loans, a weakness of Fairbanks. The entity will service all CSFB-originated mortgage loans going forward.
"The agreement to integrate the Olympus servicing platform into Fairbanks will permit the CSFB Asset Backed and Mortgage Backed Finance Group to focus on its core conduit and underwriting activities," a prepared statement said.
Calendar 2002
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. For more information visit www.srinstitute.com/cx333 or call 646-336-7030.
June 2-4: New York, NY Standard and Poor's will host the 2002 Insurance Seminar for insurance industry professionals and investors. In support of the revitalization of New York, the conference will be held at the Grand Hyatt New York. For more information call 212-438-2800.
June 2-5: Whistler, BC, Canada - Insight will host the Fifth Annual Asset Securitization Forum ABS 2002. For more information call 1-888-777-1707 or visit www.insightinfo.com.
