Ivan Gjaja has left Citigroup Global Markets where he was director and head of ABS research, sources have confirmed. Gjaja left March 1, after giving prior notice. There was no word by press time regarding where Gjaja, who had been with Citi for more than three years, will resurface. Gjaja took over from Peter DiMartino, who held the position while the firm was still known as Salomon Smith Barney.
Dennis Kraft resigned March 2, from Wachovia Securities where he served as director, head of consumer ABS research, according to market sources. Kraft joined Wachovia in April 2004, and reported to Brian Lancaster. There's no word on where Kraft is heading. His departure is one of several in recent months from the research team covering structured finance at Wachovia Securities.
Rick Watson steps in as managing director and head of the European Securitization Forum, joining the organization from Financial Guaranty Insurance Company's London office where he served as managing director for structured finance. Watson, who was co-chair of the ESF's Legal and Regulatory Committee from 2000 to 2004, will report to Manfred Schepers, head of the Bond Market Association International. The new hire will be responsible for directing the activities of the ESF by supporting and growing its membership across all European market participants as well as coordinating the overall support of the global cash and synthetic securitization markets in conjunction with the American Securitization Forum and the BMA's ABS and MBS divisions.
FGIC hired Lisa McCall as director in international finance. She will focus on future flow and other types of emerging market transactions. McCall was most recently a director at MBIA Insurance Corp. where she concentrated on future flow securitizations and was responsible for the origination and structuring of transactions in Latin America, Eastern Europe and the Middle East. She began her work in the structured finance field at CapMAC.
Fitch Ratings has hired Greg Gupton and Bill Hunt as managing directors in the rating agency's quantitative financial research group. Gupton will focus on loss-given default issues and exposure at default issues. He will also conduct credit research on the corporate finance and insurance sectors. Hunt will focus on credit modeling for residential mortgage-backed securities and other structured finance areas. They will report to the research group's global head Ahmet Kocagil.
GSC Capital Corp. - a REIT that invests in real estate-related securities, whole loan mortgages, bank loans, corporate loans and other ABS - has appointed Brian Oswald CFO. Before joining GSC, Oswald served for seven years as the CFO and chief accounting officer of Capital Trust, a self-managed finance and investment management REIT that specializes in credit-sensitive structured financial products.
Wachovia Corp. hired Atul Bajpai as managing director and CEO for its corporate and investment bank in Europe and head of European fixed income. In the newly created role, the new hire will have direct management responsibility for all European fixed income origination and distribution activities. Bajpai will report to the head of the corporate and investment bank, Steve Cummings, and head of fixed income, Curtis Arledge. Bajpai will be part of the corporate and investment banking operating committee and the fixed income division management committee. Bajpai was previously at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein as managing director and global head of debt principal finance, asset-backed conduits and securitization.
Societe Generale Corporate & Investment Banking announced that Benoit Hubaud will assume responsibility for forex and interest rate strategy research, in addition to his current role as head of credit research. Hubaud will report to Gregoire Varenne, head of fixed income and derivatives, commodities and treasury for Europe and Asia. Vincent Chaigneau has been appointed head of forex and interest rate strategy, reporting to Hubaud. Hubaud founded Societe Generale's credit research department in 1997. Before starting the credit research team, he was head of sales for the bank's fixed income division. Chaigneau joined Societe Generale in 1993 as an economist for the capital markets division. In 2004, he was appointed to his most recent role as head of interest rate strategy.
TheMarkets.com has expanded its research offering to include fixed-income content on its global research and estimates platform. The new content adds debt coverage to the firm's existing equity coverage. The new content will address debt instruments such as ABS, interest rate products, high yield and high-grade bonds as well as other types of instruments.
Moody's KMV - a wholly owned subsidiary of Moody's Corp. that provides quantitative credit risk measurement and management solutions to lenders, investors and corporations - announced a new version of RiskCalc for the German market. RiskCalc Germany version 3.l will enable users to more effectively and efficiently measure changes in private firm credit risk, the company said.
Moody's Investors Service's UK credit card indices further deteriorated in December 2005. The indices are based on delinquencies, charge-offs, the payment rate and excess spread. However, performance has been variable across trusts, said the report titled "UK Credit Card Indices: December 2005." "Although most trusts continue to benefit from relatively strong levels of excess spread, Moody's is closely monitoring the performance of the various trusts and, on occasion, requesting further information from issuers," explained Christophe Germain, assistant vice president at Moody's, who co-authored the report.
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