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WHISPERS: September 8, 2008

Standard Chartered Bank appointed Vinod Aachi as the global head of structuring, a newly created position. Aachi will also be a member of the Financial Markets Management Committee and report directly to Lenny Feder, group head of financial markets. Aachi, who will be based in Singapore, was previously at Deutsche Bank in Singapore and Hong Kong, where he was responsible for all structuring in Asia. During his 11 years at Deutsche, Aachi helped build the bank's capability in structuring a wide range of products such as fixed income, credit, currency, equity, commodity and hybrid derivatives. His other responsibilities included sales, credit, pricing, idea generation, trading desk coordination, and legal and regulatory clearances.

WHISPERS: August 18, 2008

TIAA-CREF Asset Management has opened an office in London, its first international office. The new location will be staffed by local investment professionals who will extend TIAA-CREF Global Real Estate's activities in the U.K. and Europe to broaden the firm's access to new value-add and long-term investment opportunities. 'This office will strengthen and enhance our global real estate platform in the United Kingdom and Europe, which will help us to continue to grow and actively manage our real estate investment portfolio in these markets and beyond,' said Tom Garbutt, managing director and head of TIAA-CREF Global Real Estate.

WHISPERS: August 11, 2008

Deutsche Bank has combined its ABS and its capital management divisions. The merged global structured credit products team will be run by Frank Byrne in London and Elad Shraga in New York. Byrne was previously co-head of the securitized products group. Shraga was in the principal finance group that bought and traded assets ranging from metals to power plants. The new team is part of the bank's credit-trading business, run by Colin Fan in London and Boaz Weinstein in New York.

Whispers: August 4, 2008

Deutsche Bank has promoted Ido Gonen to run its Latin American securitization team, according to a spokesperson at the bank. The banker replaces Brigitte Posch, who recently left to work at Pacific Investment Management Co. (ASR, 7/16/08). He will have tough shoes to fill. Posch worked eight years at Moody's Investors Service, where she earned a reputation for rigor among Brazilian and Mexican clients before hopping over to Ambac for a remarkably short stint of six months, and then Deutsche. Gonen was also at Moody's for a roughly two-year stretch, working primarily in U.S. RMBS, according to a source at the agency. He's been at Deutsche since July 2005. Gonen didn't return a call for comment, while Pimco hasn't returned calls or an e-mail requesting information on Posch's new title and responsibilities.

WHISPERS; July 28, 2008

Avon, Conn.-based Structured Finance Advisors (SFA), which has been an investor in the ABS and MBS sectors since 1993, is teaming up with two commercial mortgage veterans to set up a fund that will take advantage of the current lack of market liquidity in the sector, according to Joe Lorusso, president at the firm. The fund is starting out with $10 to $20 million in equity, with a bank that would leverage the equity about 3X, and is targeted toward $300,000 to $2 million loans that have a 65% current LTV. The average loan will be $1 million. These loans will be made out to cash-flowing, profitable businesses that have a pro-forma positive debt coverage ratio. SFA is teaming up with Fred Dupuy and Rich Sleight, who combined have 40 years of experience in commercial real estate. Currently, according to Lorusso, banks have exited the commercial mortgage loan business and SFA, with the help of Dupuy and Sleight, will extend loans to commercial mortgage businesses that are expanding or buying a facility. Lorusso said that SFA's role is to make sure that the criteria are met, to review the loan files and to do the monitoring. 'There's opportunity in this end of the market to take advantage of,' he said. The company's Web site is sfa-invest.com.

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