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Whispers

David Montano will be moving to JPMorgan Securities' securitized products trading desk as strategic principal trader. His focus will include principal risk taking in securitized products. "It is with a combination of inevitable nostalgia and excitement for a new future that I report that this will be my last broadly distributed MRV [Mortgage Relative Value]," said Montano in a short statement contained in JPMorgan's recent MBS research. In his new role, Montano "will partner with the respective trading desks in SPG and maintain customer interaction in coordination with the sales-force," he said. Matt Jozoff, formerly from Goldman Sachs, has joined JPMorgan and will replace Montano as head of MBS strategy.

Bear Stearns has hired James Augustine Jr. and J. Scott Thomas as senior managing directors to expand its middle markets business. Augustine will head the new group in Memphis, Tenn. Thomas will lead sales and small business loan securitization for the group. The new hires join from Morgan Keegan and will both be based in Bear Stearns' new Memphis office. While Augustine was most recently head of institutional sales, Thomas was the product manager for the government guaranteed group. In their new roles, both hires will provide financial institutions with the entire range of fixed income financial products, advanced portfolio strategies and analytical expertise. They will also buy small business administration loans for securitization to distribute to banks, credit unions, insurance companies, money managers and municipalities with assets of less than $10 billion. Thomas would be reporting to Augustine who reports to Dan Hoffman, a senior managing director and the head of fixed income interest rate sales at Bear Stearns.

Merrill Lynch announced a number of new hires. Paul Levy will be managing director and head of the bank's exotic credit structuring for the EMEA regions reporting to Paul Horvath, co-head of structured credit trading, EMEA. Nick Chavdarov will be managing director and head of the bank's emerging market and structured credit group reporting to Dale Lattanzio, head of credit, real estate and structured products, EMEA. John Young also comes on board as managing director for ABS structured credit trading and Roman Kogan joins as associate at the bank with a focus on ABS execution and risk modeling. Young and Kogan will be reporting to Cyrus Korat, head of ABS trading, EMEA. Kwee Tee Lim has been hired as director and senior correlation trader reporting to Neil Walker, co-head, structured credit trading, EMEA. All of these new hires were previously at Deutsche Bank. Paul Griffiths joins Merrill as director in the proprietary credit trading EMEA group reporting to Head of Proprietary Credit Trading EMEA Ben Rick. Griffiths was previously at Bluemountain. Phillipe Niebuhr joins the bank as vice president of distressed and high yield trading for EMEA regions reporting to Head of Distressed and High Yield Trading Steven Zander. Niebuhr joins the bank from Goldman Sachs.

The ABS research team at Credit Suisse is looking to expand. The team is currently searching for a home equity ABS analyst with at least two to five years experience and with a good familiarity with home equity issuers, including underwriting and servicing practices. The candidate should also have good writing and analytical skills.

Princeton, N.J.-based commercial real estate services firm NAI Global hired Paul Reitz as vice president of its expanding global capital markets group, which provides advisory and property sale services to property owners and institutional investors. Previously, Reitz was president of NAI Stoneleigh Huff Brous McDowell, in Fort Worth, Texas. He was also founder and chairman of Sinclair Resorts & Hotels, which owns five luxury boutique resorts valued at $100 million.

The Bond Market Association last week announced Mary Kuan's appointment as principal staff advisor to the Association's corporate credit markets division. Kuan was also named vice president and assistant general counsel reporting to Lynnette Hotchkiss, senior vice president and associate general counsel with supervisory responsibility for the Association's corporate credit markets, municipal securities, MBS and securitized products, funding, and government and agency divisions. As the division's principal staff advisor, Kuan will focus on initiatives that affect the corporate bond markets, working with BMA members and corporate division committees. Kuan was previously from the law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP where she was a corporate associate in capital markets and mergers & acquisitions.

Jay Bryant joined Deutsche Bank Securities as a director in the firm's CDO group, part of its global markets division. Bryant will be responsible for cash and synthetic CDO origination, syndication and distribution. He reports to Michael Herzig and Michael Lamont, managing directors and co-heads of the U.S. CDO group. Bryant left a nine-year stint at Merrill Lynch, where he was a director in structured credit sales.

Banco de Credito del Peru closed a $100 million, 10-year bond backed by diversified payment rights (DPRs) on March 14. Pricing on the deal - rated triple-A by both Moody's Investors Service and Standard & Poor's - was 24 basis points over 1 month Libor. Standard Chartered was sole lead on the transaction, which was wrapped by Ambac. Mayer Brown Rowe & Maw was transaction counsel as per cross-border law. The bond marks the first 10-year debt issue into the international market by a Peruvian bank and is a follow-up to a $280 million DPR deal BCP closed last November. As with the prior transaction, proceeds will go to fund the bank's mortgage origination.

Next month UBS AG is bringing to market a $1.2 billion hybrid cash and synthetic CDO. The deal, Duke Funding X, is the thirteenth CDO managed by Duke Funding Management, a subsidiary of Ellington Management Group LLC. The deal has nearly a 70% bucket for investment-grade subprime RMBS credit default swaps; a 14% bucket for cash subprime RMBS and a 10% and 6.5% bucket each for synthetic and cash prime RMBS securities. The collateral has a four-year revolving period during which it can sell up to 15% of its collateral. Some $852 million of unfunded super senior credit default swaps will be issued, along with $348 million of funded notes.

Sources say the latest entrant to Singapore's REIT business, Cambridge REIT, will look to undertake a CMBS exercise as soon as it completes a S$350 million ($215.2 million) initial public offering. The CMBS, estimated at S$300 million, will help refinance a bridge loan taken by Cambridge Industrial Property Management - the REIT manager - to purchase a portfolio of industrial properties located in Singapore. ABN Amro has the IPO mandate and is seen by observers to be the leading candidate to handle the refinancing.

The International Swaps And Derivatives Association has published the results of its 2005 year-end market survey of privately negotiated derivatives, which monitors credit default swaps on single names, baskets and portfolios of credits and index trades. The survey found that the notional principal outstanding amount of CDS grew 39%, compared with growth in the first half of 2005. Growth for all of 2005 was up by 105%, compared with 123% in 2004.Meanwhile, the ISDA also reported that post-trade processing has dramatically improved over the last year, according to the ISDA's survey, which was presented at the association's annual general meeting last week in Singapore. For large firms that conduct 1,500 or more swaps trades per week, the derivatives backlogs - the level of CDS confirmations outstanding - have decreased their time outstanding from 23.5 to 16.2 business days.

In December, delinquencies among home equity loans aged 60-plus days were stable, at 6.78%, according to the Home Equity Index Composite released by Moody's Investors Service last week. The relative good news, however, was short lived. Delinquencies and foreclosures on loans in the 90-day and older range increased, while delinquencies in the 60-to-89 day range fell, said Moody's. This suggested that performance on some of the loans in the 60-to-89 day range had worsened, and slipped into further stages of delinquencies

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