Sector developments and company hires

Special servicing assets transferred
The assignment of substantially all of the assets of C-III Asset Management to Greystone Servicing Company, pursuant to the applicable PSA associated with each of the C-III specially-serviced CMBS, is complete. The assignment includes 64 transactions rated by Moody's and 28 Moody's-rated US conduit CMBS that hold C-III specially-serviced companion loans, but excludes the non-C-III specially-serviced companion loans.

Greystone announced in January that it had expanded its capabilities into special servicing with the acquisition of C-III and its US$20.7bn servicing portfolio. The new special servicing group at Greystone is led by Paul Smyth, who joined the company last year (SCI 30 September 2019), having previously served as president of C-III in a prior role before taking the global chief credit officer, CRE position at Credit Suisse in New York for several years.

In other news…

COSME guarantee inked
The EIF and Raiffeisen Bank have signed a guarantee agreement allowing the bank to increase its lending capacity to offer €12m of new financing with better terms and conditions to SMEs in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In addition, the bank will be able to extend its support to a wider range of clients, including start-ups in the country whose restricted lending opportunities due to high credit risk have been even further narrowed by the pandemic. The EIF guarantee is provided under the COSME Loan Guarantee Facility, as part of its COVID-19 economic support package introduced by the EU to provide working capital to European SMEs.

EMEA
Aslan Ozdemir has been appointed as associate director, operations and consequently co-policymaker of SANNE in the Netherlands (SGNL), with approval by the Dutch Central Bank. He joins SGNL country head Yasemin Demirtas and EMEA md Sean Murray as Dutch Central Bank policymakers meeting local regulatory requirements, as senior leaders of the business.

North America
StoneX Financial has hired Brian Vescio as the head of its structured credit products business. He will oversee the management of the business and be responsible for building it out beyond the firm’s core agency mortgage activities to encompass additional structured credit offerings, including ABS, CLOs, CMBS and non-agency RMBS. Vescio brings nearly two decades of experience managing structured product portfolios for the proprietary trading businesses of ING, Deutsche Bank and RBS. In the past five years, he managed non-agency mortgage and asset-backed securities for Nomura and Sandler O’Neill.

Self-management transition completed
Two Harbors Investment Corp has completed its transition to self-management, following the termination of its management agreement with PRCM Advisers on for cause (SCI 22 July). No termination fee was payable to PRCM Advisers in connection with the termination. The company has directly hired its strong and experienced senior management team, along with the other personnel who have historically provided services to Two Harbors. It has also completed the transition of the functions necessary to continue to operate its business without interruption.