North America

Greystone has hired Anthony Alicea as head of production of the portfolio lending group. He will report to Mark Jarrell, who leads the group, and he will oversee production for the firm's bridge and mezzanine lending products that complement Greystone's lending products. In his 20-year career, he has led CMBS and securitisation projects for Arthur Andersen's real estate consultancy, managed CMBS production at Nomura Credit & Capital and originated agency loans as well as CDO activity at Centerline Capital Group (now Hunt Mortgage). Alicea also previously held multifamily finance roles at Pensam Capital and World Class Capital Group.

AIR Worldwide has appointed Roger Grenier as svp of global resilience to lead the firm's resilience initiatives, which aim to develop solutions that aid society's efforts to better prepare for and recover from extreme events, across the globe. The role will include working with AIR's ILS team to explore new opportunities for utilising catastrophe models to improve resilience to catastrophic events and expand its existing partnerships with development banks, as well as private banks that help securitise public risk. Grenier has 20 years of experience working directly with global risk models and was formerly director of catastrophe research and development at Liberty Mutual, where he was responsible for developing techniques to evaluate non-modelled catastrophe risk worldwide.

New Penn Financial has promoted Kevin Harrigan to the position of president. He joined the firm in 2013 and most recently served as coo. In his new role he will lead New Penn's daily operations and will join New Penn ceo Jerry Schiano and Shellpoint Partners co-ceo Bruce Williams on the executive management committee for the origination company operated by Shellpoint Partners, the parent company of New Penn.

THL Credit has appointed Brian Murphy as head of capital markets. Murphy, who is based in Chicago, is md and senior portfolio manager for THL Credit's tradable credit strategy. In this newly created role, Murphy will be responsible for overseeing all of THL Credit's capital markets activities, including sourcing investment opportunities from banks and lenders and managing excess risk across THL Credit's tradable credit and direct lending strategies. Murphy joined THL Credit in 2012 in connection with the company's acquisition of McDonnell Investment Management, where he was a senior credit analyst and senior portfolio manager.

Eurosystem update

The ECB has published three new guidelines amending the Eurosystem monetary policy, valuation haircuts and additional temporary measures relating to refinancing operations and collateral eligibility, which will apply as of 16 April. Among the changes are the adjustment of risk control measures for retained covered bonds with extendible maturities and the exclusion of CMBS from collateral eligibility, due to their relatively complex nature. Additionally, the ECB published details on the minimum information that should be provided by firms applying for Eurosystem designation as an ABS loan-level data repository.

NPL data test

European DataWarehouse has launched a new initiative to support the development of the non-performing loan market and the EBA data templates. Starting this month, ED will collect test files for NPLs, in accordance with reporting templates developed by the EBA (SCI 15 December 2017), until the end of June. The organisation says that by providing a unique platform for the collection of test data, it is providing the opportunity for banks, servicers and other market participants to familiarise themselves with the EBA templates and loan-level reporting for residential mortgages and SME loans.

Fino sale completed

UniCredit's disposal of a portion of its retained exposure in the class B, C and D notes issued by the Fino 1 Securitization and Fino 2 Securitization vehicles has been settled (SCI passim). In addition, the bank has placed €617.5m - with a coupon of three-month Euribor plus 150bp - of senior guaranteed notes issued by Fino 1, which benefit from the GACS scheme and have the highest rating assigned in Italy in the context of GACS securitisation (A2 by Moody's and BBB (high) by DBRS). HSBC, Natixis, NatWest Markets and Mediobanca supported UniCredit in the placement of the GACS transaction. This marks the completion of the second and final phase of Project Fino, resulting in the bank's overall position in the Fino portfolio being below 20%.

Transfer request

Newmark Capital is requesting consent from the holders of the controlling class and income notes of Newmark Capital Funding 2014-1 and 2014-2 CLO to assign its rights and obligations under the collateral management agreement to Pretium Credit Management pursuant to a master sale agreement. If no response by the majority of the controlling class is received within 45 days, they shall be deemed to have consented to the assignment.

Bon-Ton exposure

US retailer Bon-Ton last week announced the closure of a further 42 stores, beginning this month and running for 10-12 weeks. An estimated 11 CMBS loans (eight of which are securitised in CMBS 2.0 transactions) totalling US$430m across 12 deals have exposure to the closures, according to Morgan Stanley figures. The largest affected loan is the US$146.1m Fox River Mall, securitised in WFRBS 2011-C4. Two of the loans - the US$16.9m Wausau Center (WFRBS 2011-C4) and US$92m University Mall (LBCMT 2007-C3) - are currently held REO.

Data Enhancement

CoreLogic is set to redistribute credit risk transfer loan-level data from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to new and existing non-agency RMBS clients at no additional charge. The CRT redistribution will include CAS, STACR, Whole Loan Securities and Seasoned Credit Risk Transfer Trust data. In addition, the firm's RiskModel is being enhanced to seamlessly integrate the reference pool data for both the CAS and STACR programmes.

RMO consultation

The Reserve Bank of New Zealand's consultation on the terms under which it should accept mortgage bonds as collateral and the proposed new residential mortgage obligation (RMO) standard closes on 16 February. The central bank believes that the proposed new collateral standard would: improve its risk position by promoting the use of higher quality and potentially more liquid, mortgage bonds as collateral in its lending operations; support New Zealand lenders by creating an additional funding instrument for residential mortgages; and promote a deeper capital market through the availability of simple, comparable and transparent mortgage bond instruments. The aim is to create a more standardised and transparent framework for mortgage bonds, thereby improving their quality and making them more marketable.

Acquisitions

White Oak has acquired Federal National Commercial Credit, a specialised commercial finance company providing government receivable financing, commercial factoring and asset based loans to small and middle-market companies. The acquisition expands White Oak's asset-based lending product offerings and capabilities to serve new government and factoring clients. FNCC's senior leadership team consisting of Kwesi Rogers, ceo, and Kysha Pierre-Louis, cco, will continue to lead the business from Bethesda, Maryland. Post-close the business will be named White Oak Business Capital. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.