Fitch Ratings in London has hired three professionals for its commercial mortgage-backed securitization ratings team and is looking to add an additional trio in the coming months. The hires will bring the team's headcount to 25. Sebastian Keuchel joins from German mortgage bank Wuerttembergische Hypothekenbank in Stuttgart, where he headed the middle office for U.K. and Irish mortgages. And Gioia Dominedo was an analyst on J.P. Morgan's real estate structured finance group in London; both start at Fitch as analysts. Asina Ajwani meanwhile is an internal hire at the associate director level from Fitch's Frankfurt office, where she covered a range of asset-backeds.
All three start in April and will report to Rodney Pelletier, head of Fitch's CMBS group. He said: "The pipeline in CMBS has expanded rapidly and we're staffing up to meet the increase in deal flow." John Bigley, a director in the CMBS group at Fitch who recently resigned to join Merrill Lynch (BW, 3/21), has not yet been replaced.
At WuerttHyp, Keuchel reported to Brigith Terry, head of mortgage origination for the U.K., Spain and the U.S. Dominedo reported to Jon Rickert, head of real estate structured finance at J.P. Morgan. Neither Terry nor Rickert returned calls.