Linda Lowell, managing director at RBS Greenwich Capital and a veteran of the MBS sell-side research community, left the firm last week to set up her own mortgage-backed consulting business. Lowell, who has worked as an MBS analyst at several current and former Wall Street firms including Credit Suisse First Boston, PaineWebber, Drexel Burnham Lambert and Bankers Trust, beginning in 1987, is branching out on her own now because she believes it is a good time in the economic cycle to offer MBS expertise. She aims to advise banks, investors and originators on all the moving parts in the MBS market. Her new firm, Lowell Associates, will be based in the New York suburb of Ossining, N.Y. "I guess you could call it Hamburger Helper," she said, of how she envisions her new role. The practice will include consulting on all types of mortgage-backed securities, not just those backed by prime mortgages.
Lowell said now is a particularly good time to hang her own shingle because of where the mortgage market is and because of some of the additional restrictions on researchers. "It's hard in research. Firms are increasingly having a desk analyst who puts things together that aren't published and don't appear as research, but there's still this crying need to get that ARM primer together," she noted. Lowell aims to offer her experience as a key selling point. "There are fewer and a fewer people like me who have seen a few cycles and know where the bones are buried," she noted.
At Greenwich Capital, which she joined from CSFB almost five years ago, Lowell was a strategist in the ABS strategy group. Her last day there was Friday. Peter Ward, spokesman at Greenwich Capital, did not return a call by press time and it could not be determined if Lowell will be replaced.
