Freddie Mac adds senior hires

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In December, the board of directors at Freddie Mac named Richard Syron as chairman and chief executive officer, following the departure of Gregory Parseghian amid questions over transactions used to smooth earnings volatility.

The appointment comes at a time when the home mortgage financer hopes to quell investor worries after having to restate three years of earnings upward by $5 billion in November.

Previous to being elected Freddie Mac chairman, Syron served as the chairman and chief executive officer of Thermo Electron. Before that, he served as the chairman and chief executive officer of the American Stock Exchange, was the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and was the president of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston.

Syron has also served as assistant to the former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker and as Deputy Assistant Secretary of the US Department of Treasury.

His experiences, “make him uniquely qualified to handle the management, financial and public policy issues before Freddie Mac,” says Shaun O’Malley, the lead director on the company’s board. “I look forward to working with him to complete the company’s remediation program, including ongoing timely and accurate financial reporting and registration of the company’s equity securities with the SEC.”

Separately, Freddie Mac has announced that it retained the services of Charles Elson, in mid-November, who is the Edgar S. Woolard, Jr. chair in corporate governance and the director of the John L. Weinberg Center for corporate governance at the University of Delaware.

Elson will help Freddie Mac’s board of directors shore up their corporate governance practices, policies and guidelines.

“Professor Elson’s valuable and respected insight will help mold us into a model of excellence and shape our company’s future,” says O’Malley. “Professor Elson’s work is part of our commitment to building and retaining the trust of our stakeholders and to achieving our mission to expand homeownership and affordable rental housing opportunities.”

Freddie Mac also announced early last month that Richard Karl Goeltz has been elected to its board of directors. Goeltz was vice chairman and chief financial officer for American Express, served as group chief financial officer and a member of the board of National Westminster Bank.


Cantor adds to MBS

Cantor Fitzgerald has boosted its fixed-income business by hiring two mortgage-backed securities veterans. Steve Bischoff has joined the financial broker to head the mortgage-backed trading side, while Matt Mancuso is to head the mortgage-backed sales operation.

Mancuso previously worked as a mortgage salesman at Advest Securities and before that he spent 18 years on the MBS side at Bear Stearns. Bischoff was a senior collateralized mortgage obligation trader at GMAC-RFC. Mancuso will report to Bischoff.

A company spokesman was unable to confirm press reports suggesting that the firm also plans to hire up to 25 mortgage sales and trading professionals over the coming months, split between five to seven traders and 15 to 20 sales people.

After the decimation of its workforce on September 11, Cantor Fitzgerald has been rebuilding its institutional sales and trading franchise and has relocated its voice brokerage activities to the London office.

Targeting the mortgage-backed securities market is the first step in building up Cantor’s fixed-income institutional sales and trading business, to mirror the firm’s equity activities. “It’s the first piece in a huge puzzle,” says a company spokesman.

The mantle for boosting fixed income at Cantor Fitzgerald has been taken up by Irvin Goldman, who joined the firm in July to act as president of the firm’s debt capital markets and asset management divisions. He was previously head of fixed-income institutional sales and trading at CSFB.

Goldman is responsible for building an asset management business within Cantor that will provide money managers with capital raising, prime brokerage, clearing, and trading execution through an integrated offering. And earlier this year, the firm announced that it would offer sales and trading of high-yield bonds to its clients.

“With the additional focus on new products, combined with Cantor’s reputation for providing excellent service and unparalleled sales and trading distribution, we will achieve significant milestones for the firm and our customers,” says Goldman.


Credit head at CSAM

Credit Suisse Asset Management has strengthened its credit capabilities by hiring Michael Buchanan as head of US credit products in the fund’s fixed-income division. His experience in the credit market includes high yield, investment-grade corporate, leveraged loan, emerging markets, and credit research.

Buchanan joins from Janus Capital Management, where he was a portfolio manager for high-yield products, and reports to Dennis Schaney, global head of fixed income.

“Mike brings to his position, broad and deep experience in the credit markets,” says Schaney. “He will work closely with the rest of CSAM’s fixed-income management team to further strengthen our commitment to performance excellence and to ensure that we deliver to clients the consistent and disciplined investment management services they require.”

Adds Buchanan: “CSAM has a strong global platform and a solid US team, and I am excited about working with them to deliver superior investment performance to all of CSAM’s fixed-income clients.”

Prior to joining Janus, Buchanan worked as a senior portfolio manager at BlackRock Financial Management, responsible for all high-yield trading. Previously, he spent eight years at Conseco Capital Management, serving as portfolio manager and overseeing all credit trading, including investment grade, high yield, emerging market, convertible, bank loan, and money market.



Also on the move...

Ron Goldshmidt has joined UBS’s fixed-income, rates, and currencies division in the newly created position of head of Latin American trading. He is responsible for local bond markets and derivatives, including convertible currency swaps, and reports jointly to Stephen Kenny, global head of emerging market trading, and Todd Morakis, Tokyo-based head of government bonds and interest rate derivatives trading in Asia. Before joining UBS, Goldshmidt managed Toronto Dominion Securities’ Mexican peso, Chilean peso, and Brazilian real trading businesses.

The European Investment Bank is to appoint Eila Kreivi to replace Carlos Guille as head of funding for the Americas and Asia Pacific. Guille became director of lending operations in Spain and Portugal in November. Kreivi worked as Guille’s deputy after the introduction of the euro before going on temporary reassignment to a development agency in Paris.

CE Unterberg, Towbin has appointed Andrew Berger as a senior managing director and head of investment banking, asset management, and private client services. He joins from Swiss private bank Union Bancaire Privée, where he was head of corporate development and a member of the executive management. He will be based in New York and will report to Thomas Unterberg, chairman and chief executive, and John Gutfreund, president of CE Unterberg, Towbin.

Charlie Cawley, founder and chief executive officer of MBNA, is to retire at the end of the year with Bruce Hammonds succeeding him as CEO. Hammonds was named CEO and John Cochran was named chief operating officer of MBNA America Bank in June 2002. Cochran now becomes CEO of MBNA America Bank. Cawley, Cochran, and Hammonds were part of the original team that founded MBNA in 1982.

Credit Suisse First Boston has hired Mark Davis from Freddie Mac as mortgage-backed securities trader of 15-year pass-throughs in its New York office. He reports to Matt Rupel, co-head of MBS trading. Davis worked as a 15-year trader at Freddie Mac’s dealer side in McLean, Virginia.

Barclays Capital has hired Mitch Jacaruso as director, responsible for callable agency bond trading. He reports to Mike Yarian, director and head of US dollar agency and supra and sovereign trading.

New York-based biopharmaceutical company Emisphere Technologies has hired former Ernst & Young derivatives specialist Elliot Maza as chief financial officer. He will be responsible for leading the company’s effort in financial operations, planning and corporate governance.

Minyoung Sohn has been appointed portfolio manager of Janus Capital Management’s Growth and Income funds, succeeding David Corkins who will continue to manage the Janus Mercury fund. Gibson Smith has been named portfolio manager of the Janus High-Yield fund and the company’s other high-yield portfolio.

Richard Waugh is to replace Peter Godsoe as CEO of Scotiabank. Godsoe is to step down from the position he has held for 11 years after the bank’s annual general meeting on March 2. He will stay on as chairman. The Scotiabank board also plans to name McCarthy Tétrault partner Arthur Scace non-executive chairman on March 2.

Citisoft has hired Holly Miller as region manager, responsible for contributing to the firm’s continued North American expansion through the development, alignment and implementation of regional strategies and services. She was previously head of investment operations for Bank Julius Baer.

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