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Whispers: October 27, 2008

Prudential Financial's Prudential Fixed Income Management appointed Sara Bonesteel to head up its efforts in identifying new opportunities in the structured asset management space. Bonesteel will also be responsible for developing financing strategies and relationships for its many businesses, including its hedge strategy, CDOs and insurance businesses. Most recently, Bonesteel served as senior managing director at Bear Stearns financial analytics and structured transactions group.

Jefferies Group appointed Chander Gupta as head of European ABS and MBS trading. Gupta will work with the firm's European customers on U.S. mortgage products and create a franchise in European ABS and MBS. Before Jefferies, Gupta was a managing director at Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) in charge of European ABS trading. He worked at RBS for eight years and has more than 15 years of securities industry experience.

Steve White, the former head of European ABS at Morgan Stanley, is now with U.K.-based hedge fund Cambridge Place Investment Management as chief investment officer for Europe, according to market reports. White joined Morgan Stanley's London office in 1996 and has been one of a handful of key figures in the growth of European securitization over the years.

Oak Hill Advisors hired Goran Puljic, T.K. Narayan and Scott Snell for the firm's structured products group. The new hires will be focusing on investment opportunities in the credit markets. The team joined Oak Hill from Lehman Brothers, where they managed roughly $2 billion in structured credit assets through both third-party fund vehicles and proprietary capital within Lehman Brothers Private Equity. Their appointment enhances the investment capabilities of Oak Hill Advisors' structured products group led by Jason Serrano, who joined earlier this year from The Blackstone Group. Puljic and Serrano will co-lead this effort. In his new role as managing director and co-head of the structured products group, Puljic brings valuable experience with investing in CLOs, CDOs and structured credit assets. Before Oak Hill Advisors, Puljic was managing director and head of the structured credit investment group at Lehman Brothers Private Equity for six years and was a managing director at Goldman Sachs, where he had senior roles in both interest rate and credit derivatives for nine years. While at Goldman, he spent two years in Frankfurt leading the bank's German fixed-income division. T.K. Narayan joins Oak Hill as a principal. At Lehman, he was a senior vice president and worked as a portfolio manager in the structured credit investments group, where he focused on secondary market CDO investments. Snell joins as a vice president. At Lehman, he was a vice president focused on analyzing and trading CDOs.

Lowenstein Sandler created a global financial crisis group, which is a team of attorneys from several practice areas dedicated to serving clients affected by the current economic turmoil. The new group includes the firm's bankruptcy practice, capital markets litigation team focused on CDOs and other forms of securitizations, derivatives practice, investment management practice, mortgage banking and finance practice, insurance practice, securities litigation team, and a white-collar criminal defense practice.

Deutsche Bank's global institutional asset management business, DB Advisors, appointed Kyle Delaney as head of the division in the Americas. Delaney, a managing director who is based in New York, reports to Roelfien Kuijpers, global head of the firm. Delaney will lead the continuing development of DB Advisors' business across the Americas and will represent the firm with regional regulatory and industry organizations. Delaney was formerly with Deutsche Bank's private wealth management division, where he was a regional head of private banking and a member of PWM's U.S. executive committee. Before Deutsche Bank, he held sales and management positions at Bank of America Securities and Morgan Stanley, overseeing business operations in Asia, California and Washington, D.C. Before starting his career in financial services, he was a White House Military Aide to Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton. He is a graduate of the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York.

Hannover Re Group reported a decline in 3Q08 profit resulting from the sharp fall in equity prices and above-average burden of catastrophe losses, and not write-downs on fixed income securities, which make up the bulk of its asset portfolio. The reinsurer said that the profit forecast for the full 2008 financial year is no longer attainable, but it maintained a good outlook for its reinsurance business in 2009.

Markit announced last week the launch of the Markit iTraxx Europe Financial Total Return indices. The new indices replicate the performance of a sample portfolio that buys or sells a Markit iTraxx CDS contracts and invests the remaining notional amount in money market instruments. These indices have been designed to serve as a benchmark for institutional investors with debt positions in financial institutions. Markit has licensed Deutsche Bank to offer Exchange Traded Funds on these four new indices. Index levels will be published on www.indexco.com.

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