Falling victim to current difficult market conditions, GSC Group's U.S. CLO team let go of some of its staff last week, sources said. This is part of a broader restructuring of the firm's corporate credit division. GSC's European CLO group was unaffected by these changes. The firm's U.S. corporate credit group is currently headed by Thomas Inglesby, a senior managing director at GSC.
French banking giant Credit Agricole will cut about 500 jobs in its subsidiary Calyon by the end of the year. The bank announced the cuts, which will be evenly divided between France and international offices, as part of an effort to save Ä300 million ($425 million) by the end of 2009. The bank said that the cuts in France will be "based on voluntary redundancies and internal mobility" and that cuts to positions outside of France would be done in accordance with "local legislation." Calyon has more than 13,000 employees in 58 countries. Patrick Valroff, the former head of specialized financial services at Credit Agricole, has been overseeing Calyon's affairs since May 2008. Valroff said the company would be refocused on serving the banks' large corporate and institutional clients.
Bingham McCutchen has added two key partners to the D.C. office, Michael Wolk and Amy Kroll, both formerly of Foley & Lardner. Wolk is a former vice president and chief counsel of the Market Regulation Department at the National Association of Securities Dealers (now known as the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority or FINRA) and focuses on Securities and Exchange Commission(SEC), exchange and FINRA compliance and enforcement matters. Kroll, a former SEC assistant general counsel and attorney-advisor in the SEC Division of Market Regulation (now the Division of Trading and Markets), principally counsels clients nationally and internationally on issues related to the regulation of broker-dealers and other financial services providers. Wolk and Kroll's arrival to Bingham follow the recent addition of four securities lawyers to the Washington office.
Citadel Investment Group made four senior hires in the mortgage and securitized products business. Glenn Perillo joins the firm as head of securitized products research, reporting to Patrik Edsparr, head of global fixed income and chief executive officer of Citadel Europe. Perillo was with BlackRock for 10 years, most recently with the portfolio management group where he specialized in residential mortgages. Perillo led BlackRock's mortgage research and modeling initiatives, and had served as head of mortgage research and co-head of financial modeling at BlackRock Solutions. Additional team members in Citadel's mortgage business include three mortgage portfolio managers: Kevin Scherer, co-founder and former partner of Midway Group and previously with Credit Lyonnais; Brian McDonald, previously a managing director and senior portfolio manager with JPMorgan's ABS principal investment group; and Rajan Dabholkar, who was most recently with Proxima Alfa Investments and also held positions with JPMorgan and Credit Suisse. All three portfolio managers will join Citadel's securitized products team in New York, headed by Bill King.
Kondaur Capital Corp. hired Raymond Snytsheuvel as general counsel. In this capacity, the new hire will head up all corporate affairs of a legal and compliance nature to help the firm navigate "all of the risk and legal issues that arise with default servicing," according to Jon Daurio, chairman and chief executive officer of Kondaur. Snytsheuvel has spent the last 20 years in various roles within the mortgage lending industry. Before joining Kondaur, Snytsheuvel served as general counsel at The Bohan Group and before that he was senior legal counsel for Option One Mortgage.
BNP Paribas has replaced its loan syndication global head Jean-Louis Duguit and has announced that Julian van Kan will be taking over the role. Duguit was recently appointed deputy head of structured finance.
Lloyds TSB Corporate Markets appointed Martin Mulligan as a regionally focused associate director in its financial markets business. Mulligan joins after spending the last fourteen years working for the National Australia Bank Group in both Ireland, and most recently Australia, where he has spent the past eight years as a director, in corporate risk management, helping Melbourne-based clients with their interest rates and commodity exposures. He will now bring this risk management experience across all financial markets and treasury products to businesses in the Thames Valley and South East of England. Mulligan will join Mickey Morris, associate director in the financial markets group, to assist the bank's customers across the region in identifying and evaluating their exposures as well as provide them with the necessary tools to reduce any unwanted financial risks.
Credit Suisse announced additions to its structured derivatives team. Christian Porath joins the bank as co-head of the bank's structured derivatives sales division (SSDS) in Central Europe. Porath will work alongside Harald Epple, who also recently joined the derivatives group from Morgan Stanley. The co-heads will both report to Savady Yem, head of the Middle East side of Credit Suisse's SSDS operations and Martin Korbmacher, head of securities and investment banking in Germany.
The Pending Home Sales (PHS) Index for July recorded a 3.5% decline to 86.5% versus expectations of 88.6%. However, contract signings were strong and there was a surge in Federal Housing Administration mortgage applications.
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