Whispers

August 08, 2005, 12:00 a.m. EDT 4 Min Read

R.W. Pressprich & Co. has hired Patrick Gallaway, Arturo Cifuentes and Gerard O'Connor to work in a new structured finance group. Gallaway, formerly head of origination and structuring for Barclays Capital, will lead the group, reporting to John Carroll and Jim Gilmartin, co-heads of sales and trading. Cifuentes, formerly of Wachovia Securities and O'Connor, also formerly of Barclays, will report to Gallaway. The team will "expand our presence in the secondary CDO market with extension into primary CDO issuance in the near future," the company announced.

ABN Amro has expanded on its home-equity ABS origination operations with three recent hires. John Doyamis recently started as a managing director in home equity origination. Doyamis has experience in subprime home-equity ABS and previously worked at Merrill Lynch and Bear Stearns. On the structuring and analytical side, Jerry Liu, formerly from JPMorgan Chase Mortgage, was hired as vice president while former JPMorgan Securities employee Philip Li has the title of director. All report to managing director Bill Haley.

MortgageIT Holdings, Inc. appointed Phil Kuhn as senior vice president and national loan production manager for its correspondent lending division. Kuhn most recently served as senior vice president and national director of special programs at Citimortgage. Prior to that he spent ten years as vice president of correspondent lending for the Principal Residential Mortgage, Inc.

Hedge fund GSC Partners hired Jeffrey Horan and Drew Doscher away from UBS to work as managing directors in its fund management group. The duo, who joined UBS in 2001 from Lehman Brothers, will focus on distressed corporate debt and leveraged markets.

GMAC Bank has hired Bob Groody as its new chief financial officer, based in its Horsham Pa., offices. Groody had previously worked at Cendant Mortgage, where he served as both chief operating officer and chief financial officer.

Online direct lender E-Loan Inc. agreed last week to merge with Popular Inc., which is Puerto Rico's largest financial institution and the largest Hispanic-owned financial services franchise in the U.S. In the $300 million deal, Popular will acquire all of E-Loan's common stock for $4.25 a share. E-Loan will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Popular but maintain its brand identity, headquarters and management team. E-Loan originated some $5 billion in mortgage, home equity and auto loans last year.

General Motors Acceptance Corp. agreed to sell 60% of commercial finance unit to a group of investment firms, including, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., the company announced last week. GMAC CEO Eric Feldstein said proceeds from the sale would be used to fund residential mortgage lending and possibly to retire some of its outstanding debt.

Commerzbank Corporates & Markets announced the appointment of Christopher McMullen as senior securitization originator and structurer within its European Securitization Team. His appointment is part of the bank's strategic plan to leverage its structuring expertise beyond Germany. Roman Schmidt, head of corporate finance at the bank said that with McMullen's support, Commerzbank's plans to drive forward its specialist group in London focused on developing tailor-made solutions that hedge against extraordinary risks.

Brazos Higher Education Service Corp. has selected Compliance 360 as its compliance and contracts management platform, the companies announced. Compliance 360, a corporate-wide contracts repository, provides all the necessary alerts so that contract renewals are handled in a timely and efficient manner as well as allowing enough lead-time to review all contracts before they expire or renew by default.

MBIA reported its global structured finance adjusted premiums increased 60% in the first half, on a 70% increase in policy production, the company reported. U.S. production increased 72%, and non-U.S. production increased 46%, as the company guaranteed several large CDOs, future flow and rental car fleet lease transactions. Of the total global structured finance exposure taken on in the first half of the year, 64% was rated single-A or greater.

Origen Financial will host a conference call and webcast on Thursday, Aug. 11, at 11:00 a.m. EDT to discuss its second quarter results. The call may be accessed on Origen's web site at http://www.origenfinancial.com or by dialing 1-800-500-0311.

Clarification: In an article titled Piggybacks weigh on credit fundamentals, appearing in the Aug. 1, 2005 ASR, Fitch Research managing director Glenn Costello would like to clarify that a lack of accumulated equity restricts a borrower's ability to retain their homes should there be a credit problem and that buyers of first-lien loans are sometimes, not usually, uninformed of the presence of a piggybacked second-lien loan.

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