Houlihan Lokey has acquired corporate finance advisory firm Quayle Munro, adding a new capability in data and analytics, as well as expanding its financial institutions focus in Europe. Based in London with a team of 40 financial professionals, Quayle Munro's client list spans the globe and includes private and publicly listed companies, financial sponsors and entrepreneurs. The data and analytics group will continue to be headed by Andrew Adams, Quayle Munro's ceo, who will also serve as co-head of Houlihan Lokey's UK corporate finance business.

CMBX roll
The IHS Markit CMBX.11 index is set to launch on 25 January, referencing 25 risk retention-compliant US conduit CMBS deals issued between June and December 2017. Morgan Stanley CMBS strategists note that 48% of these transactions utilise the horizontal structure to satisfy risk retention requirements, while 28% are vertical and 24% are L-shape. Consequently, the index will reference risk retention-held junior tranches, including 12 of the 25 triple-B minus bonds that were retained by the risk retention party and 15 double-B bonds that were retained at issuance. As such, investors are expected to benefit from exposure to junior tranches of deals that they would not have been able to access in the cash market.

Europe
Lucy Graham has joined Cairngorm Capital as an investment director. She was previously a senior corporate finance partner at Clydesdale Bank and has over 20 years' experience in leveraged finance and corporate law. Graham spent a decade in the bank's leveraged finance team generating bespoke structured finance solutions.

The Carlyle Group has promoted eight of its staff to partner, 19 to md and 31 to principal/director. Among the new mds are Martin Glavin (whose focus is on European structured credit) and Merrill Goulding (distressed credit), both of whom are based in London.

Cloudscraper - a commercial real estate exchange for buying, selling and financing - has appointed Matthew Webster as its cfo. Webster was previously global head of real estate finance at HSBC and has also held senior real estate roles at Hypo Real Estate, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Fitch. Cloudscraper is headquartered in London, with offices in Tel Aviv, Dublin and Berlin.

Angus Duncan has joined Hunton & Williams as a partner in the firm's London office. He has more than 25 years of structured finance and specialty finance experience, having worked on Europe's first CRE CDO, first pro rata CLO, first European CLO managed by a hedge fund and first catastrophe bond transaction incorporating a tri-partite repo structure. He was most recently at Winston & Strawn and spent over a decade at Cadwalader and at Allen & Overy. He began his career at Slaughter and May.

Baljit Khatra has joined Hymans Robertson as a risk transfer consultant, based in the firm's Birmingham office. He previously spent seven years at Mercer, in its strategic solutions group, working on a number of longevity swap transactions.

Monetary penalties
The Federal Reserve Board has terminated enforcement actions relating to residential mortgage loan servicing and foreclosure processing issued in 2011 and 2012 against 10 banking organisations. Goldman Sachs has agreed to pay US$10m, Morgan Stanley is paying US$8m, CIT is paying US$5.2m, US Bancorp is paying US$4.4m and PNC is paying US$3.5m. Enforcement actions against these five banks, plus Ally Financial, Bank of America, HSBC, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley and SunTrust have now ended. With the latest penalties, the Federal Reserve Board has now assessed penalties totalling approximately US$1.1bn against all Federal Reserve supervised firms under mortgage servicing enforcement actions.

North America
Alternative asset manager Drift Capital has changed its name to Charleston Capital. The firm is based in Charleston, South Carolina, and provides structured credit solutions to fintech-enabled non-bank financial services companies. The firm has also appointed Edward Hamilton as head of capital markets. Hamilton has previously worked at BroadStreet Group, Kidder Peabody and Paine Webber.

Mitsubishi UFJ has appointed Andy Vestergaard as cio for its MUL Railcars division. He joins MULR following 20 years of service with GATX, the last four years as vp and executive director of rail structured finance.

Pacific Life has named Kevin Byrne as ceo of its rebranded asset management business, Pacific Global Asset Management. Byrne has been svp of finance and risk management for Pacific Life's retirement solutions division for the past five years and before that was evp and cio for AXA Equitable Life Insurance Company. Pacific Asset Management is included in the new business, but retains its current leadership under senior mds Dominic Nolan and James Leasure.

Victory Park Capital has hired Todd Kushman as a principal and head of capital markets. He is the former co-founder, partner and chief operating officer at Torrey Pointe Capital and will lead Victory Park's capital markets initiatives, including optimising and identifying new alternative investment product offerings. Before Torrey Pointe, Kushman was md at Cerberus Capital Management, coo at Ally Financial and built the structured product derivatives trading desk at Bear Stearns and its successor, JPMorgan.

NPL progress report
The European Commission has released its first progress report on its Action Plan for reducing non-performing loans, which shows that it is on track with implementing the plan. The report states that as of 2Q17 the total volume of NPLs across the EU stood at €950bn, with the overall NPL ratio declining to 4.6%, which is down by roughly one percentage point year-on-year and by a third since 4Q14. NPL ratios have fallen in nearly all member states: nine had ratios above 10%, at end-2Q17, while 10 had ratios below 3%. In the spring, the Commission will propose a comprehensive package to further reduce the level of existing NPLs and to prevent the build-up of NPLs in the future - including a blueprint for the establishment of national asset management companies, measures to further develop NPL secondary markets and improvements to data availability and comparability.

Open Banking initiative
Moody's notes in its latest Credit Outlook publication that the UK's Open Banking initiative – which launched on 13 January - is credit positive for UK consumer securitisations because it will improve underwriting and collection efficiency for non-bank lenders. The initiative requires the UK's nine largest providers of current accounts (AIB, Bank of Ireland, Barclays, Danske Bank, HSBC, Lloyds, Nationwide Building Society, RBS and Santander) to share their customer data with third parties if the customer gives permission. By directly accessing current accounts, the lenders will be able to view data on its customers' disposable income and spending patterns, complementing the less detailed data that credit reference agencies provide. Of the approximately £32bn of UK consumer ABS that Moody's publicly rated in 2017, around half were backed by pools solely originated by non-banks.

RTS hearings
ESMA and the EBA are holding a joint public hearing on the new EU Securitisation Regulation at the EBA's premises on 19 February. The hearing will cover the two organisations' recently published consultation papers on draft regulatory technical standards (RTS) under the Securitisation Regulation (SCI passim), including disclosure requirements, homogeneity criteria and risk retention.