Dan Castro has left GSC Group for Huxley Capital Management, a start-up private equity company/hedge fund, where he will be chief risk officer. In his new position, Castro will be working alongside founders Bryan Caisse and Dr. Chris Donegan.
Theodore Foster, who was senior vice president in MBS at Ginnie Mae, is leaving the agency after 19 years. Steve Ledbetter, who was formerly a senior advisor at Ginnie Mae, will be the acting SVP for MBS. ASR sister publication National Mortgage News reported that Foster is leaving for Minneapolis to work for Wells Fargo Bank. National Mortgage News also reported last Thursday that Michael Frenz, executive vice president at the agency, returned to his post roughly four weeks ago. He had been assigned by the Department of Housing and Urban Development to work in another section of the department.
Gatten Sadowski hired Christopher Mellia as a senior analyst for ABS structured products. Mellia was previously from both Lehman Brothers and Credit Suisse, where he was an ABS strategist. He brings extensive experience in collateral analysis, cash-flow sensitivity and the overall securitization process, a release from the firm said.
Bill Beckmann, president and chief operating officer at CitiMortgage, will be stepping down to spend more time with his family. Beckmann has served as president and COO of CitiMortgage since 2005, overseeing all aspects of the company's residential first mortgage business. Previously, he served as president of Citigroup's real estate servicing and technology division, overseeing residential real estate properties. Before that, Beckmann was president of Specialty Lending, where he was responsible for the Student Loan Corp., First Collateral Services and Private Mortgage Operations. Before returning to Citigroup, Beckmann was vice president of strategy and new business development at IBM for two years, and helped to form IBM's global Internet division.
The Bank of New York Mellon appointed Scott Posner chief executive officer of its global corporate trust business. Since he began working with the business in 1997, Posner has held various leadership positions such as overseeing the development and implementation of business strategy, serving as chief executive officer of asset solutions and serving as chief financial officer for the company's share-owner services business. Posner, who currently oversees all sales and marketing efforts globally for global corporate trust, will replace Karen Peetz on July 1. Peetz was promoted to chief executive officer of issuer, treasurer and broker-dealer services.
Bulltick Capital Markets appointed Alberto Bernal-Leun as head of fixed-income research. Bernal, who will be based in Miami, will be primarily responsible for leading the firm's efforts to increase its participation in the region's fixed-income market. Bernal joins Bulltick from Bear Stearns, where he served as managing director of emerging fixed-income research since 2005. In that capacity, Bernal was responsible for cover-
ing the Colombian, Venezuelan, Argentinean, Ecuadorian and Mexican economies. Before joining Bear Stearns, Bernal was head of Latin American economic research at IDEAglobal, where he conducted economic analysis of the Latin American region to support trade execution in local and external markets.
Centerline Holding Co., the parent company of Centerline Capital Group, announced that J. Larry Duggins, executive managing director in the commercial real estate group, is retiring from the company and the commercial real estate industry by June 30. Duggins plans to attend divinity school at Southern Methodist University and devote his time to helping launch nonprofit youth-oriented foundations. Duggins founded RemiCAP, the predecessor to ARCap which merged with CharterMac to form Centerline. Centerline's commercial real estate group is currently structured as two divisions: agency products, which is led by William Hyman, and CMBS and commercial products, including equity funds, which is run by Mark Brown (see story page 9). Both units are supported by the company's portfolio management group, led by senior managing director and past ARCap president Paul Smyth. William Hyman, who joined Centerline when it acquired PW Funding in 2001, has been with the company for the past seven years. PW Funding was an independent mortgage banking subsidiary of Centerline that Hyman co-managed, establishing a solid track record in all facets of loan production. Brown came to Centerline as part of the recent Centerline-Nomura collateral management agreement. He brings a team of origination, credit, capital market and legal professionals.
The Financial Services Au-thority (FSA) appointed three new senior advisors to join its wholesale and institutional business. Jeremy Bennett, former co-head of fixed income for European and emerging markets at Credit Suisse First Boston, joins FSA with more than 20 years of banking experience. Previously, Bennett worked at the Bankers Trust Co. in Singapore as managing director of structured lending, securities and derivatives. Simon Stockwell, former head of the European corporate advisory business at Lehman Brothers from 2001 to 2006, joins FSA with an extensive background in market compliance and surveillance. Before Lehman Brothers, Stockwell worked as a deputy director and head of surveillance at the Securities and Futures Authority, one of the FSA's legacy organizations, for 10 years. David Smith was formerly senior partner in charge of KPMG forensic accounting in the U.K. Since retiring from KPMG in 2003, Smith has worked on a major compliance issue for a global bank and in 2007 assisted the birth of a U.S. forensic firm in London. All three advisors will report to Sally Dewar, FSA managing director of wholesale and institutional markets.
Sarbashis Ghosh, who was previously with the ABS research team at Merrill Lynch, has officially joined Deloitte & Touche's regulatory and capital markets consulting unit. Ghosh will be managing a team that focuses on complex financial products, quantitative services and risk strategies. Ghosh resigned from Merrill in April.
Standard Chartered Bank, headquartered in London and Singapore, launched a new branch in Paris last Thursday. The Paris-based team is led by Raoul Leblanc, who is joined by 20 relationship managers and specialists.
Chatter in the market last week circulated around a potential conflict of interest at Moody's Investors Service, which announced that it had tapped law firm Sullivan & Cromwell for an external review of its European CPDO ratings process, after the Financial Times raised questions regarding the accuracy of the rating agency's analytical models and methodologies. Interestingly, Sullivan & Cromwell is also the firm representing Moody's in lawsuits from stockholders who are accusing the rating agency of violating federal securities laws by not disclosing that their subprime ratings were "inflated." Calls to Moody's for comment were not returned by press time.
As of May 26, 194 structured finance CDOs have hit an event of default totaling more than $208 billion, according to Standard & Poor's. Out of these vehicles, 45% are structured finance CDOs issued in 2006 through 2007, including 117 mezzanine transactions collateralized primarily with A'- through BB'-rated tranches of RMBS and other structured finance transactions. There were also 54 high-grade structured finance deals collateralized primarily with AAA'- through A'-rated tranches of RMBS and other structured finance transactions. And there were 23 CDOs squared collateralized primarily by notes from other CDOs, as well as tranches from RMBS and other structured finance transactions, S&P said.
Thornburg Mortgage will need more time to report its first-quarter earnings to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said last Monday. The report, which will determine the value of sold investments, was predicted to be filed by June 2, but is now expected to be filed by June 12. According to the mortgage firm, the delay is a result of the lengthier valuation of investments it sold earlier in the year in a bid to raise cash. Because of volatility in the mortgage market, which lowered the value of bonds backed by home loans, Thornburg said last month that it anticipates a large loss in the first quarter.
State Street Corp. said Tuesday it will sell $2.5 billion of stock to cushion against potential investment losses. According to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the offering will dilute existing investors by about 9%. The company may now need to rescue $28.3 billion of conduits, whose holdings of MBS declined in value with the global credit markets. The off-balance-sheet investment pools carried $149 billion in unrealized after-tax losses as of March 31. The company disclosed it has debt fund markdowns and $1.9 billion in unrealized after-tax losses in its $75.4 billion investment portfolio. State Street's current market value is $27.8 billion.
ACA Capital Holdings an-nounced the extension of the fourth forbearance agreement with its Structured Credit and other similarly situated counterparties through June 20. The agreement, which was subject to extension in certain circumstances, had in April already been extended to May 30. Under the agreement, the counterparties of the $60 billion CDS contracts will waive all collateral posting requirements, termination rights and policy claims against ACA Financial Guaranty Corp., ACA Capital's financial guaranty insurance subsidiary.
San Diego-based subprime lender Accredited Home Lenders has let go of an undisclosed number of workers, according to ASR sister publication National Mortgage News. A spokesman for the company confirmed the cutbacks. "The restructure was done in order to maintain Accredited's financial position in the marketplace and improve the company's long-term prospects by realizing efficiencies," the spokesman for the firm said, declining to comment further. Accredited closed operation centers in Orange, Calif.; Beaverton, Ore.; St. Petersburg, Fla.; and Woodcliff Lake, N.J. However, this information could not be confirmed. Last fall, Accredited was sold to Lone Star, which is a private equity fund.
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