North America

Schulte Roth & Zabel has elected Stephen Schauder as a partner in the structured finance and derivatives group, working with co-heads Craig Stein and Boris Ziser. Schauder joined the firm as an associate in 2015 after having previously worked at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan in the structured finance department.

CIFC has hired Jay Huang as md, senior portfolio manager and head of structured products investments. Prior to CIFC, Huang was md and global head of CLO, CDO and and distressed SIV trading for Citigroup Global Markets.

ISDA has announced the appointment of Jason Manske, senior md, chief hedging officer and head of the global derivatives and liquid markets group at MetLife to its board of directors.

Angelo, Gordon has hired Ryan Mollett as global head of distressed debt. Mollett was most recently senior md of GSO Capital Partners where he focused on distressed and special situation investing. Mollett will report to Josh Baumgarten, Angelo, Gordon's co-cio.

Highland Capital Management has recruited a pair of institutional business development professionals, in anticipation of increased opportunities in distressed credit. Laurie Whetstone has been named md (based in San Francisco) and Kieran Brennan director (based in New York), joining respectively from Bernstein Private Wealth Management and Connor, Clark & Lunn Financial Group.

EMEA

Cairn Capital has appointed Melissa Bockelmann and Zachary Farmer as members of its business development team, broadening its coverage in the Nordic region, Germany and North America. Bockelmann has over 18 years' experience in credit spanning distribution, portfolio management and product structuring. Prior to joining Cairn Capital, she was a director at 3i Debt Management where she was responsible for fundraising in Europe. Farmer previously worked at Camares Capital LLP, a long/short credit manager, in London for two years in business development.

Intermediate Capital Group has appointed Imene Boumalala to head up marketing to France, Italy, Spain, Geneva, Monaco and selected strategies to Israel. Boumalala reports to Michael Biereth, md, marketing and client relations, and will also interact extensively with ICG's global distribution team. She joins from Neuberger Berman, where she worked for 11 years as part of the institutional sales team, and was at Morgan Stanley before that.

Deutsche Bank has hired Asif Karmally as md in the financial solutions group, Middle East. He was previously at Goldman Sachs where he was executive director in structured finance sales, FICC in Dubai.

BNP Paribas Asset Management has appointed Michel Fryszman as head of structured finance. He joined on 15 January and is based in Paris. He reports to Laurent Gueunier, head of real assets, SME lending and structured Finance. Fryszman was previously at AXA Investment Managers where he was head of mortgages and specialty finance.

TigerRisk Partners has hired Marc Beckers as partner and head of EMEA. Before joining TigerRisk, he was general manager of MBeckers BVBA, advising insurers and financial players on capital optimisation solutions M&A projects and risk transfer optimization. Until July 2017, Beckers led Aon Benfield's ReSolutions team for EMEA, and before that Marc was leading Aon Benfield Analytics EMEA.

Cayman Islands

Appleby has hired Dean Bennett, who joins its Cayman corporate and finance group as associate. He was previously an associate in the derivatives and structured finance team at Baker & McKenzie in London, where he worked on a wide range of derivatives and financial markets transactions.

Ocwen update

In a recent 8-K filing, Ocwen states that it has entered into new agreements with New Residential Investment Corp to accelerate the implementation of arrangements the two parties agreed in July 2017, whereby New Residential's existing mortgage servicing rights will be converted to fully-owned MSRs via a more traditional sub-servicing arrangement involving upfront payments to Ocwen for MSRs to be transferred to New Residential over time (SCI 28 July 2017). Pursuant to the new agreements, Ocwen will receive a lump-sum 'fee restructuring payment' of US$279.6m and will continue to service the mortgage loans in return for a servicing fee for five years from 23 July 2017. The two parties continue to obtain the necessary third-party consents to transfer the MSRs to New Residential. Separately, Ocwen disclosed that it has entered into additional agreements to resolve the regulatory actions brought by North Carolina and South Dakota, bringing the total number of states where it has reached settlements to 27.

Acquisitions

AIG has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire all outstanding common shares of Validus Holdings, a provider of reinsurance, primary insurance, and asset management services. The transaction enhances AIG's general insurance business, adding a leading reinsurance platform, an ILS asset manager, a meaningful presence at Lloyd's and complementary capabilities in the US crop and excess and surplus markets. Holders of Validus common shares will receive cash consideration of US$68.00 per share, for an aggregate transaction value of US$5.56bn, funded by cash on hand. The acquisition expected to close midway through 2018, after all approvals are received.

FINO sale

Eurocastle Investment has raised approximately €48m of net proceeds through the sale of its share of the FINO 1 Securitisation senior notes, which are guaranteed by the Italian state under the GACS programme (SCI 30 November 2017). Eurocastle expects to close on its follow-on investment of €8.4m in the junior notes of the two FINO securitisations early next week, bringing the company's total investment to date in the FINO portfolio to approximately €52m. An additional deferred purchase price of €64.7m is payable over the next few years.

NB. Market moves is the new title for the previous regular article on industry changes, 'Job swaps round up' and replaces it from today - the new title embraces the breadth of coverage contained herein and will continue to go out every Friday afternoon.