People
A case of musical chairs...
Tim Madigan, who left HSBC earlier this year, has landed at the U.S. office of Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, as part of the firm's securitization effort. Madigan, well regarded in the industry, had been at HSBC for about six years.
Meanwhile, Chris Dalton, who recently left Dresdner, moved over to HSBC. Dalton joins former boss Jon Bottorff, previously Dresdner's ABS grouphead, who moved over to HSBC from Dresdner in April (see ASR 4/1/02). Bottorff reports to John Cutting, who joined the firm in September 2001.
Evan Mitnick has joined Salomon Smith Barney's real estate ABS group, focusing on subprime home equity transactions. Mitnick moves over from Greenwich Capital Markets, which he joined in early 2001. Mitnick, who also has vast experience in small business and franchise ABS, had been part of the securitization group at Prudential Securities before the firm exited the business in 2000.
Dennis Sheenan was appointed to managing director of Continental Europe GMAC's Residential Funding Corp.'s International Business Group. Sheenan will direct the company's securitization, mortgage lending, servicing and investment operations in France, Germany and the Netherlands. He will also be responsible for the areas of asset management, mortgage credit risk product management and development and structured finance.
Sheenan has been with GMAC mortgage group since 1995. He was, prior to this move, CFO of the company's International Operations.
French bank Natexis Banques Populaires has opened a capital markets unit in London headed by Oliver Regis. The unit will be responsible for developing fixed-income sales and origination, derivatives and securitization activities. Along with Regis, the new team will include 10 people. The company expects to grow this number in the future. The team will focus on the U.K., Irish, Scandinavian and Swiss markets.
Rounding out its newly revamped structured finance research strategy team, Merrill Lynch & Co. recently hired two analysts to work on asset-backed and CDO research. Yong (David) Yan, formerly from First Tennessee Capital Markets, was hired late last month as a structured finance modeling analyst and George Goncalves, formerly from Goldman Sachs & Co., was hired as a database analyst. Both will report to structured finance research head Dan Castro.
News
After a three-month hiatus, Banc of America Securities has re-introduced its daily research piece titled "ABS FirstLook," with a full staff of research strategists. Headed by Kumar Neelakantan, formerly of Credit Suisse First Boston, the research group also consists of Sean Grettum and Frank McCollum.
In addition to daily commentary on ABS new issue pricings, secondary ABS trading and Treasury trading, the report features daily pricing charts, a collateral breakdown by sector, economic calendar and rating activity chart.
For more information on receiving the daily report, contact Frank McCollum at (704) 388-8894.
The Bond Market Association is asking for changes in a proposed anti-predatory lending legislation. The BMA argues the proposed legislation would not achieve the desired goal, but would limit access to credit for low-income borrowers. The legislation would penalize financial institutions for underwriting, trading and making markets for securitizations that contain predatory loans. As it stands, the penalties are severe enough to dissuade financial institutions from participating in the subprime loan market, the BMA argues.
Fitch Ratings this week releases study it says prove that the much-heralded differences between the three agencies in terms of structured finance bond ratings are actually rare in the extreme.
The rating agency said that after a studying nearly 13,000 initial structured finance ratings, it has concluded "structured finance bond performance statistics for each rating agency are virtually identical." About 95% of the time two agencies rate a deal together, the agencies have offered the exact same rating; of the remaining 5% for which rating agencies have separate opinions, the difference between the two is typically a minimal one-notch, according to the report.
Calendar 2002
June 10-11: Chicago, IL - The Strategic Research Institute will host the third annual Equipment/Auto Finance and Lease Securitization Conference. For more information call 646-336-7030 or 888-666-8514 or visit www.srinstitute.com/ca274.
June 17-19: Barcelona, Spain Information Management Network will host the sixth annual Global Asset Securitization. For detailed information visit www.imn.org.
July 9-10: New York, NY - The Strategic Research Institute will host the third annual Forum on ABCP Liquidity/SIVs. For more information, visit www.srinstitute.com/ca276
September 5-6: London, England: The Strategic Research Institute will present The Premier European Forum on ABCP. For more information visit www.srinstitute.com/ca273
