Sector developments and company hires in structured finance

Acquisitions

AXA Investment Managers has expanded its global debt platform through the acquisition of Quadrant Real Estate Advisors. This includes an acquisition of Quadrant’s investment team and management of US$9.4bn of US commercial real estate loan mandates. As part of the transaction, 24 members of Quadrant, including five of the founding members, will join AXA IM - Real Assets. Quadrant will continue to manage various commercial real estate debt strategies in the US, Great Britain and Ireland. The team will be based in Atlanta.

Australasia

Bank of America Merrill Lynch has hired Tim Richardson as head of Australia and New Zealand securitisation origination. He will be based in Sydney and is due to start in December.  Richardson joins the firm’s global mortgages team from a position at Deutsche Bank and will report to Greg Petrie in London and local head of FICC Mark Elworthy.

DOJ complaint

The US Department of Justice has notified UBS that it intends to file a civil complaint against it related to UBS's issuance, underwriting and sale of legacy RMBS. UBS anticipates that the complaint will seek unspecified monetary civil penalties under the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act (FIRREA) regarding RMBS transactions that date back to 2006 and 2007. The bank says that the DOJ’s claims are not supported by the facts or the law, and it will contest any such complaint vigorously because it was not a significant originator of US residential mortgages and suffered massive losses on its investments in US mortgage-related assets when the housing market collapsed. It adds that it fulfilled its disclosure obligations to RMBS investors and believes that FIRREA limits any penalty that the DOJ may seek to obtain to losses incurred by federally insured financial institutions, which were a fraction of the overall losses on RMBS certificates sold by UBS.

NPL ABS

Banca Popolare del Lazio has transferred €120.5m in non-performing loans to a securitisation vehicle called Pop NPLs 2018. The senior notes are expected to be guaranteed under the GACS scheme.

Fund launch

Springrowth has announced the first close of the Diversified Enterprises Credit Fund (DECF), the first parallel lending vehicle to be launched in Italy. The DECF is a closed-ended vehicle with an eight-year investment term which has received €210m in commitments from a broad group of Italian and international institutional investors. The European Investment Fund (EIF) and the Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (CDP) acted as anchor investors in this initiative to bring capital market funding to Italian SMEs in parallel with the banking sector.