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Whispers

Vincent Fiorillo, an executive director on the mortgage origination desk at Morgan Stanley, is leaving the firm to take a position on the buyside with investment management firm TCW. Fiorillo has been with Morgan Stanley for more than 15 years, and has been an executive director since 2003. Prior to joining Morgan Stanley, Fiorillo did stints at both Merrill Lynch and Thomson McKinnon Securities.

Jack Macdowell Jr. has resigned from his position as vice president in the asset securitization group at RBC Dain Rauscher to join Greenwich, Conn.-based hedge fund, Carrington Capital Management LLC. Macdowell had been with RBC Dain since 2001, having survived the defections of numerous group members to Harris Nesbitt last year. Macdowell's duties will be divided between the remaining 14-plus securitization banking team at RBC Dain. Carrington Capital Management was started by industry veteran Bruce Rose to focus on the non-agency sector of the mortgage credit markets. To date, Carrington has issued in excess of $600 million in asset-backed securities supported by subprime mortgage loans purchased in the whole loan market. At Carrington, Macdowell will focus on risk management and other analytical functions related to the fund.

Ketan Parekh will soon start in the banking and origination group at UBS. Parekh recently left his position as vice president-capital markets at AmeriQuest Mortgage, where he had run the ABS issuance group at the mortgage originator.

Barclays Capital has hired Richard Chung, a former adjustable-rate mortgage trader for Freddie Mac, for its new mortgage backed securities unit. Chung is the 24th new hire for the Barclays unit headed by Thomas Hamilton, who Barclays poached from Citigroup Global Markets last year (see ASR 6/7/04). Chung starts at Barclays next Monday.

BNP Paribas has hired six people from the former securities unit of Freddie Mac with plans to launch a mortgage-bond sales and origination group. BNP, France's second largest bank by assets, is one of three non-U.S. banks to create a mortgage-bond sales and trading unit in the past year. BNP hired Kevin Heal as managing director and head of mortgage sales who will open an office in Tysons Corner, Va. with salesmen and traders George Livingston, Eric Salzman and Bill Ludmer, according to a BNP spokeswoman. BNP also hired Bill Poulos for mortgage-bond originations and Tim Coyne as a mortgage trader in New York.

Standard Chartered's ABS team, headed by Warren Lee, would seem to be in an enviable position in the region, as StanChart's Korean ABS effort received a boost last week, when it acquired Korea First Bank for $3.3 billion from Newbridge Capital, the Ministry of Finance and Economy and Korea Deposit Insurance Corp. with three cross-boarder MBS transactions under its belt, it is expected to continue its program in 2005.

The Commercial Mortgage Securities Association announced the formation of a federal political action committee from its CMBS Investors Conference being held in Miami last week. An advisory committee will direct the CMSA PAC's fund-raising efforts and contributions to federal candidates for elected office. "Since the inception of the CMBS market in the mid-1980s, the market has grown to more than $540 billion in CMBS globally. During the last several years, there has been a steady increase in regulatory and legislative activity affecting the commercial real estate capital markets. The creation of a PAC will enhance CMSA's efforts to aggressively tackle these issues on Capitol Hill," said CMSA CEO Dottie Cunningham.

Canadian structured finance issuance is expected to total between $10.5 billion and $11.5 billion in 2005, approximately 5% more than the $10.1 billion seen last year, according to Moody's Investors Service. Last year's volume represents a 24% decline from the previous year's volume total, Moody's added. "Moody's expects overall issuance in 2005 to experience reasonable growth, fueled largely by commercial mortgage-backed securities, which should increase by 20% to 30% to about $3 billion to $3.5 billion," said analyst Charles Gamm. Additionally, Gamm expects "some growth in residential mortgage-backed securities and other asset-backed securities, totaling about $7.5 billion to $8 billion [in] cumulative issuance."

Mortgage insurer MGIC Investment Corp. reported net income for the quarter ended Dec. 31, 2004 of $134.5 million, compared with the $103.9 million for the same quarter a year ago. New insurance written in the fourth quarter was $15.8 billion, compared to $19.3 billion in the fourth quarter of 2003. New insurance written for the quarter included $4.8 billion of bulk business compared with $5.1 billion in the same period last year. New insurance written for the full year 2004 was $62.9 billion compared to $96.8 billion in 2003 and includes $15.8 billion of bulk business compared to $25.7 billion in 2003.

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