Standard Chartered Bank has hired Peter Mack to work in its alternative investment group, where he will focus on non-performing loan opportunities in Asia. He joins the bank from South Africa's Standard Bank, where until recently, he headed the Asian primary debt markets business. In November 2004, Mack was involved in structuring the world's first securitization of negative equity residential mortgages, a HK$260 million issue by Hong Kong's Pan-Asian Mortgage Co. (ASR, 11/22/04).
R. Blake Murphy has moved to Lehman Brothers as a senior vice president in its institutional client group, where he will focus on structured credit sales and securitized products. Previously, Murphy was at Fortis Investments.
Dewey Ballantine LLP has hired Doron Goldstein as part of the firm's intellectual property practice in New York. Goldstein was previously at Paul Weiss, where he worked on pharmaceutical royalty and franchise securitizations. In his new role, Goldstein will work closely with Dewey Ballantine's structured finance group on IP securitizations.
Schulte Roth & Zabel, a New York City-based corporate law firm, recruited Joseph Suh as a partner for its structured products and derivatives group. Suh, who specializes in CDOs, joins Schulte from McDermott, Will & Emery, where he was a partner in its global finance practice group. "His depth of experience in complex structured finance products gives him an exceptional understanding of their opportunities, nuances and pitfalls," said Paul Watterson, Jr., who heads the practice area at Schulte Roth & Zabel. "I'm confident he will fit right in, helping us enhance relationships with current clients and attract new ones."
The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight appointed a new deputy named Edward DeMarco, who will take on the role as chief operating officer of the OFHEO as well. DeMarco is stepping down from his role as assistant deputy commissioner for policy at the Social Security Administration and will be joining the OFHEO on Oct. 31. According to an OFHEO release, DeMarco will be a key participant in determining OFHEO's future direction and its policies in terms of regulating Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and helping in the transition into a new regulatory regime envisioned by pending GSE legislation.
Asset Management Finance has hired Kenneth McDermott as executive vice president. In this newly formed position, McDermott will over AMF's financial structuring, underwriting, research and capital market activities. Aside from this, AMF said that Richard Haywood has been promoted to executive vice president and will continue to oversee the firm's business origination efforts. Before being hired at AMF, McDermott had been co-head of a specialty finance unit within Citigroup focusing on buying and securitizing cashflows related to mutual fund Class-B share fees. Prior to that, he was co-head of origination and credit of Citigroup's financial institutions group within Global Securitization, where he oversaw the origination, structuring and execution of ABS deals.
Law firm Morgan Lewis & Bockius has hired away two structured finance partners from Minneapolis-based Faegre & Benson. Michael Macaluso and Douglas Rutherford join Morgan Lewis as finance partners in the firm's Chicago and New York offices, respectively. Rutherford was previously co-head of ABS at Faegre while Macaluso also served as treasury counsel to GMAC-RFC.
Art Frank, who was formerly a director in fixed income research at Nomura Securities, has left the firm to work at Barclays Capital. Frank starts at this new position today.
Radian Group announced last week that its subsidiary, Radian Insurance, received authorization to conduct insurance business in and from Hong Kong. Radian has also been serving as a partner to Standard Chartered Bank, which is one of the region's largest mortgage lenders, becoming the bank's exclusive mortgage insurance provider.
Lead managers Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein and Merrill Lynch have sent out price guidance for an upcoming $430 million auto loan deal originated by Russia's MDM Bank. A $270.9 million A piece with an average life of 0.92 years and ratings of Baa1' and A-' from Moody's Investors Service and Standard & Poor's, respectively, has guidance of 100 basis points over one month Libor. A $77.4 B piece with an average life of 2.32 years and ratings of Baa1'/BBB' has guidance of 160 basis points over. And a $54.8 million C piece with an average life of 3.28 years and ratings of Ba2'/BB' has guidance of 350 basis points over. October 16 is the projected pricing date.
Fitch Ratings and Markit Group, a provider of independent data, portfolio valuations and OTC derivatives trade processing to the global financial and commodities markets, have entered into an agreement whereby Markit will provide its suite of credit derivatives data and tools for integration into Fitch's Risk Analytics Platform for Credit Derivatives (RAP CD). Under the agreement, Markit's pricing for single-name credit default swaps, bonds and loans, European asset-backed securities, convertible bonds, and the iTraxx and Dow Jones CDX indices as well as the Markit Reference Entity Database will be integrated into RAP CD. RAP CD users will also have access to Markit Portal, a Web-based intelligence tool providing unique insight into corporate performance and the financial markets by fusing together Markit's credit prices with key equity information, quality business news and independent research. "As a recognized leader in the derivatives market, the addition of Markit's data and tools clearly enhances the transparency that RAP CD brings to the market," said Kimberly Slawek, group managing director, Fitch Ratings.
Standard & Poor's has developed new criteria for U.S. RMBS loans with maturities of more than 40 years as a response to the recent interest in originating longer-term mortgages. The criteria are effective for all November 2006 transactions. In calculating the increased default risk to a hybrid ARM borrower after the initial rate resets, the new methodology looks at the difference in payment shock based on amortization term by calculating the change in mortgage rate from 7.00% to 10.00%. And when calculating loss severity, the rating agency assumes that the loan does not amortize, so the speed with which a 30-year-plus loan amortizes does not need to be analyzed when calculating defaults. But amortization may affect foreclosure frequency. To determine the effect of LTV on amortization term, analysts calculated the adjusted LTV after five years and 10 years on loans with original LTVs of 80 and a mortgage rate of 10%.
Irvine, Calif.-based New Century Financial Corp. said last week that loan production dipped 5.4% in the third quarter from a year earlier and 2% compared to the second quarter. The REIT also disclosed that total loans this year reached $15.8 billion versus $16.7 billion last year. CEO and President Brad Morrice said that September's total loan production was $4.7 billion, which, he said his company was pleased with considering that they maintained the weighted average coupon on their core nonprime product at roughly 8.5%.
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