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Bill Petersohn, director of bulk acquisitions and capital market sales for Residential Capital Corp., Horsham, Pa., has resigned from the mortgage banker to take a job with an analytics firm. Mr. Petersohn is joining MCT Capital Trading, San Diego, as a regional director in charge of sales. Prior to his departure he managed ResCap's '3-D' correspondent program which involves ResCap/GMAC acquiring the servicing rights on mortgages that eventually are sold to Fannie Mae. Recently, according to sources familiar with the situation, ResCap eliminated smaller mortgage correspondents from the program. A ResCap spokeswoman said the 3-D program "has always been geared toward larger correspondents." She said Mr. Petersohn "is not a senior or executive level manager" at the company and his departure is "unrelated to changes made within the 3-D program." She declined to specify what those changes were.

Two top officers in charge of the fast growing MetLife Home Loans, Memphis, have departed the bank-owned residential lender/servicer, National Mortgage News has learned. Leaving the company is Peter Makowiecki, a senior vice president at MetLife Bank who had responsibility for MLHL, and Jeffrey Brown, a vice president at the bank who played a key role in the firm's originations. Both men were on board at First Horizon Mortgage when its parent bank, First Tennessee Corp., sold most of the lender to MetLife almost two years ago. At the end of September, MLHL ranked 11th nationwide in originations with a growth rate of 456%, according to the Quarterly Data Report. A spokesman for MetLife in Rhode Island confirmed to NMN that the two men resigned from the company "effective immediately to pursue other interests." He declined to elaborate. The two men, who were based in Texas, could not be reached for comment. Mr. Brown is the son of Carl Brown who ran Carl I. Brown & Co. for many years before that nonbank was sold to First Tennessee back in 1995. "Jeff has been with them a long time," said one business associate. "At one point he was the head of all production."

Stephen Staid has joined Saxon Mortgage Services Inc., Irving, Texas, as executive vice president of customer relationship management. The Morgan Stanley-owned Saxon is repositioning itself into the residential subservicing space, specializing in distressed asset servicing. In this role, Mr. Staid will be responsible for financial transaction management, early stage delinquency, modification fulfillment, command center, call monitoring and customer service. He also will serve as a member of the Saxon executive committee, reporting directly to chief executive Anthony Meola. Mr. Staid has more than 15 years of mortgage servicing management experience. He specializes in customer service operations and has a deep knowledge of servicing technology.

Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. has named Wall Street veteran Steve Abrahams as its new chief of securitization/MBS research within the firm's global markets division. Mr. Abrahams, most recently founder and a managing director at Citadel Capital Partners, will carry the title of managing director. During his career, he also worked at Bear Stearns as global head of liquid product strategy, and at Freddie Mac as a credit portfolio manager. Art Frank, who had been DB's director and head of mortgage-backed securities research, has left the company. Mr. Frank could not be reached for comment. Also departing DB is Karen Weaver, who headed securitization research. Ms. Weaver, one of the first on Wall Street to predict the housing bubble and mortgage crash, is retiring. A longtime mortgage researcher, Mr. Frank previously worked for Barclays Capital and for several years headed MBS research for Nomura Securities. In addition to Mr. Abrahams, Deutsche Bank Securities recently hired Dominic Konstam as global head of rates research. Mr. Konstam comes to the firm from Credit Suisse where he was in charge of global interest rate research.

PennyMac Mortgage Investment Trust, Calabasas, Calif. said its chief investment officer, Michael Muir, has resigned effective March 2. No reason was given for his departure. The publicly traded mortgage vulture fund named Vandad Fartaj as its new CIO, effective March 3. A spokeswoman for PennyMac said Mr. Fartaj has been with the company since its inception two years ago. As CIO Mr. Fartaj will be responsible for all capital markets activities, including asset valuation, trading, hedging and research. Mr. Fartaj also was named chief capital markets officer for two PennyMac affiliates. Prior to joining PennyMac, he held a number of positions at Countrywide Securities Corp., a broker-dealer, including vice president of whole loan trading. Later this year PennyMac hopes to launch its lending conduit.

Radian Group has named commercial banker Robert Griffith executive vice president and chief operating officer for its principal mortgage insurance subsidiary, Radian Guaranty Inc. Mr. Griffith will be responsible for the company's operations, loss management and information technology functions and will report directly to Radian Guaranty president Teresa Bryce. Most recently, Mr. Griffith served as senior vice president for Bank of America, where he was responsible for a nationwide network of loan fulfillment centers providing underwriting, processing and loan funding services. Prior to that, he was president and chief executive officer of Irwin Mortgage Corp. Mr. Griffith is a past chairman of the Mortgage Bankers Association's Residential Board of Governors. He has been a member of both the Fannie Mae National Advisory Council and the Housing Policy Council of the Financial Services Roundtable.

Theodore Tozer is the new Ginnie Mae president after being sworn in on Wednesday by HUD secretary Shaun Donovan. "I am looking forward to the challenges and I believe my 30 years' experience in the mortgage capital markets has uniquely prepared me to manage Ginnie Mae," Mr. Tozer said. Ginnie Mae mortgage-backed securities issuance totaled $454 billion in calendar year 2009, up from $270 billion the previous year. During his Senate confirmation hearing, Mr. Tozer said Ginnie Mae has become a major player in the MBS market and it has to address counterparty risk with its MBS issuers. The Senate confirmed Mr. Tozer on Feb. 11. He began working on Ginnie securitizations in 1986 at National City Mortgages, which was acquired by PNC Financial Services Group in 2008. "Ted is the right person to guide Ginnie Mae through the turmoil in the housing and secondary mortgage markets," secretary Donovan said.

LoanMarket.net, an online auction website specializing in residential and commercial loans, has hired mortgage banking veteran David Akre as a managing director. Mr. Akre co-founded New York Mortgage Trust, a mortgage lending and investing REIT that went public back in 2004. During his career, he also worked in secondary marketing and sales at Thornburg Mortgage, Santa Fe. Based in Irvine, Calif., LoanMarket is privately held. The company has been selling performing, subperforming and delinquent notes for almost a year.

The National Housing Conference named Maureen Friar, a New York housing executive, to be its new president and chief executive. She has served as executive director of the Supportive Housing Network of New York for 14 years and has experience in building a "strong and engaged membership organization," NHC said. Most recently, Ms. Friar was a marketing consultant to the National Equity Fund, a nonprofit investor in low-income housing tax credits. Founded 75 years ago, the National Housing Conference is an umbrella group that strives to promote national housing policies in a nonpartisan way. It also has a research affiliate — the Center for Housing Policy. Conrad Egan has led NHC for the past 12 years and plans to remain with the organization through the end of this year to help with the transition.

Tony Renzi, a 24-year veteran of GMAC Mortgage and its affiliates, has been forced out of his position as chief operating officer and president, according to company employees who work under him. A spokeswoman confirmed to National Mortgage News that Mr. Renzi is departing effective March 2 due to "streamlining efforts" and that his duties have been given to others at GMAC, which oversees Residential Capital Corp. The company declined to elaborate but issued a statement saying, "Tony has made valuable contributions in the mortgage lending and servicing business during his tenure with the company and we thank him for his many years of service." One employee said he and others at GMAC/ResCap were informed of his departure early in the morning "and even though they said his last day" will be in early March, he has not been at the company since Feb. 5 or so. Over the years, Mr. Renzi helped build GMAC's servicing business into one of the largest in the nation.