SG Corporate & Investment Banking hired David Stern as head of securitization syndicate Americas, responsible for coordinating the pricing and underwriting of new-issue ABS, CMBS, RMBS and CDOs. In his new position, he reports to Bob Woods, SG's head of debt syndicate for the Americas, and Terry Shanahan, global head of securities syndicate, located in London.
The American Securitization Forum announced that Greg Medcraft of SG Corporate & Investment Banking, will be the group's new chairman, effective July 1. Additionally, Diane Wold of GMAC-RFC was elected deputy chair and Sanjeev Handa of TIAA-CREF was elected secretary. All three will serve three-year terms.
Banc of America Securities recently made five new hires for its European ABCP team, including Principal Tony Dullaghan, who will head the European CP trading, Principal Peter Eisenhardt, who will head origination and Principal Laurent Leveque, who joins as head of short-term sales. Additionally, Rosie Lloyd joins the sales desk as an associate and Yann Marhic joins the sales team as vice president, both reporting to Leveque.
CompuCredit Corp. unit Jefferson Capital sold a $2.9 billion portfolio of charged-off consumer credit card debt to Encore Capital Group, the companies announced. Encore paid $142.8 million for the portfolio, as well as the right to purchase an additional $3.25 billion in face value charged-off credit card receivables from Jefferson over the next five years. Also as part of the transaction, Encore has extended its existing agreement to sell Chapter 13 bankruptcies to Jefferson for an additional two years and agreed to provide Jefferson with a prescribed number of accounts on a monthly basis for its balance transfer program.
Fitch Ratings affirmed the insurer financial strength ratings for both Ambac and FSA at AAA' as well as the long-term debt ratings of both insurers at AA' with stable outlook. Despite the slowdown in the market for financial insurance, and increased competition between the monolines, Fitch said that it did not envision reduced business production or pricing over the near- to medium- term, affecting the company's ratings.
Standard & Poor's affirmed the AAA' financial strength rating for Assured Guaranty Corp., as well as raising its outlook to stable from negative. In doing so, S&P also affirmed its AAA' financial strength rating, financial enhancement rating, and counterparty credit rating on AGC. "AGC's management team, staff, and board of directors seem to be working effectively and in unison to successfully make the transition from re-insurer to direct primary company," said S&P credit analyst Robert Green.
Capital One Financial Corp. announced plans to consolidate its direct-to-consumer auto lending business by relocating its Internet auto finance operations, currently based in San Diego, to its existing site in Plano, Texas. This move would effectively eliminate roughly 290 internal positions and result in the San Diego location's closing by the end of 1Q06. A company release said that the move is aimed at leveraging the scale of the existing operations as well as increasing efficiency. Capital One also announced that, with this closure, about 200 new positions will be available in Plano and affected San Diego-based employees could transfer to its Texas facility.
Eight major CMBS, portfolio and B-note lenders have selected Backshop, Inc.'s loan origination software, named cUnderwriter, to manage their CRE loan production. The eight institutions to sign on are, AIG Global Investment Group, Countrywide Commercial Real Estate Finance, CWCapital, LLC, Eurohypo AG, Gramercy Capital Corp., IXIS Real Estate Capital, RBS Greenwich Capital, and Timarron Capital.
The Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. signed its one hundredth customer for its Deriv/SERV automated credit default swap matching service, the company announced. Launched in November 2003, Deriv/SERV already has the largest customer base for its credit default swap matching service, according to the DTC. Its 100 customers include the 20 largest global dealers in credit derivatives and over 80 leading buy-side firms including hedge funds and investment managers.
Ginnie Mae has issued a final rule removing the regulation specifying the $25,000 minimum face amount of Ginnie securities. This new rule allows the Agency to issue MBS in $1,000 denominations beginning in July.
At a charity auction benefiting the Covenant House last week, United Capital Markets owner and CEO John Devaney, and his wife Selene, donated a one-week vacation aboard his yacht, "The Positive Carry," including roundtrip travel aboard his private jet. The package netted $175,000, with the winning bid going to a small group of bidders. The auction, held at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in Manhattan, was part of The Covenant House Annual Awards Dinner honoring Bear Stearns global head of ABS and MBS Thomas Marano.
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