Securitization People and Markets

Dineen is a portfolio manager of high-grade bonds at MONY Life Insurance in New York, and one of six managers reporting to Greg Staples, who heads the fixed income group. Dineen helps manage $5 billion in taxable funds that also include asset-backed securities, mortgage-backed securities and Treasuries. A graduate of Pace University in New York, he received his Masters in Business Administrated from Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn. He is a Certified Public Accountant and a Chartered Financial Analyst.

Moody's Investors Service will unveil today a default rate forecast of 9.5% for the junk market this year, and Credit Suisse First Boston is again taking the agency to task over its methodology. The heart of argument is over the relevance of macro fundamentals and the aging factor of bonds for predicting default rates, which Moody's maintains to key parts of determining forecasts. CSFB doesn't and is forecasting a high yield default rate of 5-5.5% for this year. The two players have a history of disagreeing, facing off last summer when the then Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette also came up with forecasts starkly different from the more bearish Moody's. "They are always bantering," says Ron Habakus, portfolio manager at Brown Brothers Harriman in New York. "CSFB along with Merrill Lynch have the most research on the sellside, and Moody's has all the default data--they're just vying for headlines," he adds.

Judith Putterman, a veteran corporate bond trader, has joined Fuji Securities in New York to start a corporate bond trading desk. Putterman, who started last week, most recently worked at Coastal Securities, and prior to that, Oppenheimer & Co. At Fuji, she will specialize in covering and providing liquidity to institutional accounts, and will focus primarily on investment-grade credits in the secondary market. Bernie Jensen, who will be Putterman's supervisor, said the hire was made to complement Fuji in its core areas of government and agency bond trading. Jensen would not comment when asked if this was the first of a series of hires in this area.

Thunelius is director of the long-term fixed income group and senior portfolio manager for the taxable-fixed income group. His group of 12 portfolio managers oversees $5 billion in taxable-fixed income that runs the gamut from low-duration Treasury funds to generic mortgage-backed security funds. He received a Bachelors degree from Dowling College in Long Island, N.Y., with a major in finance. Here, Thunelius, who has been at Dreyfus for 12 years, talks mostly about the $430 million Premier Core Bond Fund.

Rick Lazio, former member of the House of Representatives and defeated senatorial candidate in New York, is being discussed in industry circles as somebody who might be considered to replace the current comptroller of the currency if the Bush Administration decides to replace him. Incumbent John Hawke is a Democrat. The White House press office refuses to talk about appointments before they are announced.

Dresdner Kleinwort Benson's union with Wasserstein Perella & Co has commercial bankers at Dresdner expecting to bear the brunt of cuts. A Dresdner insider said North American operations can expect to undergo the most structural changes, with the lending group being the hardest hit. Traditional lending will become more selective and disciplined, whereas historically, lending was more arbitrary, he added. "I think bankers in commercial banking would have a little problem" more than anyone else, he said.

J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. has started cutting in its asset management group, seeking to create a single unit out of the former J.P. Morgan Investment Management and Chase Asset Management, according to BondWeek, an LMW sister publication. A fixed-income buysider at Chase who is awaiting word on his own fate says the bulk of the cuts thus far are coming on the Chase side, which has lost 30-40% of its staff, believed to total some 200, across a range of investment groups and sectors. He adds that he has heard reports of only one or two cuts on the J.P. Morgan Investment Management side, and he speculates that this is because J.P. Morgan officials are largely in charge of the finances of the newly merged entity. A J.P. Morgan Chase spokeswoman was unaware of any asset-management personnel changes.

ABN AMRO has reportedly made an offer to buy the entire U.S. banking operations of ING Barings. The ING board met last week to weigh the ABN offer as well as another offer by Bank of Montreal for parts of the firm, a source familiar with the matter told Corporate Financing Week, an LMW sister publication. In addition, the source added that Warburg Pincus has expressed interest in parts of the bank as well but he did not know if it has made a formal offer. Rumors have swirled that ABN AMRO was interested in purchasing portions of ING but until now no formal offer had been made.

The name John Dugan, a partner in Covington & Burling, is being floated around Washington as a possible replacement for John Hawke, the present comptroller of the currency. A call to Dugan produced was not returned by press time. A Bush transition aide said, "We don't speculate about any rumors that are circulated about appointments." Dugan served on the Republican staff of the Senate Banking Committee and subsequently as an assistant secretary in the Treasury Department before going back to private law practice. According to one variation of the rumor, the Bush team has sounded Dugan out about a position at Treasury which it is said he does not want and the comptrollership about which he has expressed more interest.