Seneca Capital Management has made a number of new hires, according to Gail Seneca, the San Francisco buy-side firm's cio and ceo. They are Tom Haag, a high-yield portfolio manager, Troy Grande, a mortgage- and asset-backed portfolio manager, Fred Goetsky, a corporate bond analyst, Cory Kilpack, a credit analyst from American General, and Bob Bishop, a corporate bond trader and analyst. Seneca says she now considers the firm fully staffed.
Haag had overseen high-yield for several years at the Aid Association For Lutherans/Lutheran Brotherhood in Minneapolis, but was given responsibility for distressed credits late last year. Paul Ocenasek portfolio manager at AALLB says he and Mark Simenstad, another portfolio manager, have taken over responsibility for distressed credits, as have the various sector analysts for those credits. Grande, a 10-year fixed-income veteran, comes from Fremont Advisors. Bishop worked for 22 years at a number of sell-side firms, including Salomon Smith Barney, Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch. Goetsky comes from American Express Financial Advisors.
Seneca lost four senior members of its high-yield team, which oversaw a combined $1.8 billion, earlier this year, but has been steadily rehiring since then (BW 3/31, 4/28). The San Francisco money manager had announced the hire of Greg Croll, former high-yield portfolio manager and head of global trading operations at ING Financial Markets, but Croll ultimately chose to join Deutsche Asset Management (BW, 5/12). Croll says of Seneca, "They are a great group of people and are putting a great team together. Ultimately, I just wanted to be in Pennsylvania to be closer to my daughter."