Sector developments and company hires

Alt sales head hired

Schroders has hired Peter Arnold to lead its alternative sales unit, which was established last year and focuses on the distribution of the firm’s private assets investment offering, which includes ILS and securitised credit. He reports to Schroders global head of distribution John Troiano and global head of private assets Georg Wunderlin. Arnold was most recently global head of international fund distribution at Citi, specialising in private debt, real estate and global infrastructure. Prior to that, he worked at JPMorgan, UBS and SG.

Community bank debt fund launch

Angel Oak has priced a registered public offering of 10,750,000 common shares of the Angel Oak Financial Strategies Income Term Trust (FINS), a closed-end fund that will invest in the community bank debt sector at a public offering price of US$20.00 per share, for gross proceeds to the fund of US$215m. The offering is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close on 31 May 2019. Led by Angel Oak’s experienced community bank team, FINS will invest in community bank debt including securitisations of community bank debt.

RBI MBS committee

The Reserve Bank of India has formed a committee on the development of a housing finance securitisation market, with a view to reviewing the existing state of mortgage securitisation in the country, the various issues constraining market development and to develop the market further. The mortgage securitisation market in India is primarily dominated by direct assignments among a limited set of market participants and the RBI notes that for a vibrant securitisation market to develop, it is imperative that the market moves to a broader issuance model with appropriate structuring of the instruments for diverse investor classes. At the same time, the bank says it is critical to address the issues of misaligned incentives and agency problems resulting from information asymmetry between originators and investors. Consequently, it is calling for a robust and transparent securitisation framework to be created. The committee will submit its recommendations by end-August 2019.