Risk management specialist Miroslav Visic joined Mizuho Bank in New York as a vice president, where he will report to Hiroyuki Kasama, the bank's head of structured finance. Visic was vice president of exposure management for Deutsche Bank in New York, where he worked in the securitization area for five years. He joins nine of his colleagues who left Deutsche Bank's Exposure Management Group over the last two years.
BNP Paribas appointed Richard Bongo, formerly from Merrill Lynch, as managing director and head of ABS for North America. The new hire, who will be based in New York, was previously a director in mortgage sales at Merrill, where he was a senior sales producer in ABS, MBS, mortgage-backed derivatives and CDOs. Bongo, who also worked at Banc of America Securities, Credit Suisse and Lehman Brothers, will report to Len Jardine, head of U.S. credit sales at BNP. Prior to this, BNP also hired Joe Waskas, David O'Shaughnessy and Jason Brus to its equity business and derivatives divisions.
Credit Suisse has hired Michael Shackelford as a director in the leveraged investments group. He will be primarily responsible for managing and marketing US dollar-denominated ABS collateralized debt obligations. He will report to John Popp, head of the leveraged investments group. Shackelford previously worked at Invesco Institutional, where he was responsible for managing and marketing ABS CDO portfolios. He has also worked at AEGON USA Investment Management. Credit Suisse's leveraged investments group is the largest manager of CDOs backed primarily by leveraged loans. The group also specializes in CDOs primarily backed by high yield bonds. The hiring of Shackelford supports the group's desire to expand this business further. "Bringing Mike on is a major step forward for us as the leveraged investments group continues to expand its asset and mortgage-backed investment activities," said Popp.
Fitch Ratings appointed Patrick Clerkin as a senior director in its European structured finance CDO team. Clerkin reports to Richard Gambel, managing director of the group. Gambel said that Clerkin's appointment reinforces the existing strength of the team and its increasing focus on SIVs. Clerkin joins Fitch from JPMorgan Securities where he was responsible for capital model development and structured investment vehicle (SIV) risk compliance.
Allen & Overy promoted three of its associates in its European securitization practice to partnership. Paris-based Fabrice Faure-Dauphin, London-based Vanessa Hardman and Madrid-based Ignacio Ruiz-Cmara will assume their partnership roles at the start of May 2006.
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan will speak at the Bond Market Association's thirtieth anniversary celebration reception and dinner in May. The Bond Market Association will hold the festivities at Cipriani's 42nd Street on May 18. At press time, U.S. Treasury Secretary John W. Snow is slated to be the keynote luncheon speaker during the association's annual meeting the next day at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.
Barclays Capital announced last week the appointment of Kevin Callaghan as director and head of structural loans for the company's U.S. real estate capital markets division. Callaghan, who will be based in New York, will report jointly to Michael Mazzei and Haejin Baek, co heads of U.S. Real Estate Capital Markets. Before joining Barclays Capital, Callaghan was a vice president and commercial mortgage underwriter at City & Suburban Federal Savings Bank, a vice president and chief appraiser at Chase Manhattan Bank and senior analyst at Friesch-Groningsche Hypotheekbank.
Deutsche Bank plans to create a unified global capital markets division that will place all the underwriting and syndication responsibilities of equities, investment grade and high yield bonds, and syndicated loans under one business. Richard Byrne and Hope Pascucci have been appointed as joint heads of global capital markets for the corporate and investment banking division, according to an internal memo sent out last week by senior investment banking executives Michael Cohrs and Anshu Jain. Pascucci will be responsible for capital markets in Europe and Asia, while Byrne will focus on the Americas. Byrne and Pascucci will retain their wider responsibilities in global markets and global banking, respectively, and they will report jointly to Cohrs and Jain. Deutsche Bank's regional capital markets heads will report to Pascucci and Byrne accordingly, the memo also said, noting that Byrne and Pascucci will announce their wider management team in the coming weeks. "Combined global leadership of the four capital markets businesses will create more efficient delivery to our clients," Cohrs and Jain wrote. "For our clients, capital structure management increases in complexity as derivative alternatives grow and the differences between debt and equity continue to diminish. In this environment, creating common leadership provides a tremendous opportunity for us to improve the coordination of our new issue, risk management, hedging and advisory services to our most important clients."
Student loan issuer Sallie Mae last week disclosed that servicing and securitization revenue fell by $44 million during the first quarter. The student loan issuer said that profit from "core earnings" that uses accounting methods for the securitizations and derivatives that differ from Generally Accepted Accounting Principles rose to $287 million, from $256 million or 57 cents per share last year. The company also said that losses on derivative and hedging resulted in first-quarter profits dropping 32%. Quarterly profit for the January to March period dipped to $152 million, which is equivalent to 34 cents per share, compared to $223 million, or 49 cents per share, a year ago. The results included pretax losses of $87 million from derivative and hedging activities compared to $34 million a year ago. Sallie Mae stated earnings of 63 cents per share if stock-based compensation expense is included.
Investors have maintained solid diversification in their CLO holdings, even as increasing demand for assets has prompted record growth in the asset class, says JPMorgan Securities. The bank found a 25% overlap of U.S. CLO assets overall. Within vintages from 2002 to 2005, the overlap numbers ranged from 22% to 29%. European CLO deals posted similar numbers, with an average overlap of 24%, with intra-vintage overlap ranging from 18% to 25%.
The Commerce Department reported that March housing starts dropped to the lowest level in a year given rising mortgage rates coupled with record inventories of unsold homes discouraging new projects. Starts dipped 7.8% from the prior month, to a lower-than-expected 1.96 annual rate Meanwhile, building permits, which is considered a sign of upcoming construction activity, fell 5.5% to a 2.059 annual rate. The housing starts dropped in all regions of the U.S. with single- family home starts falling f12% to a 1.591 million rate. Multifamily home starts increased 16% to a rate of 369,000.
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