Sector developments and company hires

Cross Point tapped for CLO expertise
Performance Trust Capital Partners has formed a new CLO trading desk, with the addition of members from the Cross Point Capital team led by Jared Gogek and Alex Navin. The group will expand Performance Trust's presence in credit products by adding in-house expertise in CLOs.

Gogek and Navin were co-presidents and managing partners of Cross Point Capital. The former was previously a director, structured credit sales at Citi, while the latter was a portfolio manager at BlueBay Asset management and a CLO trader at Citi.

In other news…

Digital mortgage lender acquired
SoFi Technologies has acquired fintech mortgage lender Wyndham Capital Mortgage in an all-cash transaction. The acquisition – which includes the integration of both talent and technology from Wyndham Capital – will allow SoFi to broaden its suite of mortgage products available to members, enhance unit economics and take ownership of a scalable platform that has set the industry standard for a fully digital mortgage experience. The objective is to minimise SoFi’s reliance on third-party partners and processes.

Wyndham Capital has helped more than 100,000 borrowers since it launched more than two decades ago. SoFi’s acquisition of Wyndham Capital aims to enable savings for current and prospective homeowners in both time and money through transparent rates and a seamless application process.

North America
Moelis has recruited Chrystalle Anstett as an md based in New York, leading the advisory and management of the private funds advisory (PFA) team’s global fundraises. Anstett brings over 20 years of experience in the investment management industry, where she has worked with managers across all asset classes, including private credit and real estate. She joins from Sound Mark Partners, where she was the head of capital formation and co-coo.

SOMA streamlining underway
The New York Fed’s Open Market Trading Desk will over the coming months continue streamlining the administration of agency MBS held in the System Open Market Account (SOMA). This will initially involve exchanging certain Freddie Mac MBS that have a 45-day payment delay for 55-day payment delay securities.

Once these exchanges are completed, CUSIP aggregation of certain Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac securities that have a 55-day payment delay will begin. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac aggregation will be conducted separately, rather than by comingling the two issuers.

Exchanges and CUSIP aggregation are commonly used by market participants to reduce the administrative costs and operational complexity associated with managing an agency MBS portfolio. The SOMA currently holds approximately 30,000 individual MBS CUSIPs and the exchange and aggregation processes is expected to reduce that number to less than 10,000.

These processes do not impact the size of the SOMA MBS portfolio, as all payments on the underlying agency MBS flow through to the newly aggregated and exchanged CUSIPs. However, exchanges slightly modify the MBS, as the new cashflows are received 10 days later, for which Freddie Mac provides compensation at the time of the exchange.