Career moves

Former Freddie Mac executive Pete Maselli has joined Lender Processing Services Inc., Jacksonville, Fla., as senior vice president of strategy and business development. In his new role Mr. Maselli will provide strategic counsel at key enterprise-level executive client meetings and represent LPS with the government-sponsored enterprises, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Mortgage Bankers Association and other governmental partners. He is based in Washington and prior to joining LPS, spent more than 15 years at Freddie Mac, where he led numerous strategic initiatives, including the Loan Prospector automated underwriting business. He also recently held key marketing and strategic planning positions at Overture Technologies and LandAmerica Financial Group.

R. Chad Dreier, chief executive of The Ryland Group Inc., Calabasas, Calif., will retire from that position on May 29, 2009. He will continue in his role as chairman at the homebuilder and mortgage finance company. Larry Nicholson will be promoted to the position of chief executive and will retain the title of president. Mr. Dreier joined Ryland in November 1993 as president and chief executive, becoming chairman in December 1994. With more than 25 years of experience in the homebuilding industry, Mr. Nicholson joined Ryland in 1996 as a vice president of operations and subsequently ran the Greenville, S.C. and Orlando divisions before his promotion to Southeast region president in 2004. He was promoted to chief operating officer in June 2007 and president in September 2008.

Mortgage Contracting Services, a provider of property preservation and inspection services based in Tampa, Fla., has named Michele Struckman as assistant vice president of Tampa operations and Tracy Hager vice president of the company's Dallas operations Ms. Struckman and Ms. Hager join MCS with more than three decades of combined experience in the financial services industry. As assistant vice president of operations, Ms. Struckman is responsible for creating and implementing property preservation strategies, as well as leading operations for one of the company's largest servicing clients. Ms. Struckman was most recently with Countrywide Home Loans, where during her tenure, she worked as a foreclosure manager. In her position as vice president, Ms. Hager leads operations for the company's Dallas office, providing leadership through the day-to-day account team. Prior to joining MCS, Ms. Hager worked as vice president at First American Field Services.

Mission Capital Advisors, LLC, a commercial, residential and consumer loan sale advisor with offices in New York, Florida and Texas, has hired Jason Cohen as a managing director in the firm's New York office. In his new role, Mr. Cohen will originate loan sales, trade loans and create loan sale financing platforms. For the past five years he was a managing director with the Ackman Ziff Real Estate Group, where his volume of deals completed exceeded $3 billion and he originated and placed senior debt, mezzanine debt, preferred equity, and equity for all types of real estate. "Jason joins us at a time when there is a significant amount of commercial and residential loan portfolios on the market, with an expected increase throughout 2009 and beyond," said David Tobin, principal at Mission Capital Advisors.

Trust Title Co., Maitland, Fla., has appointed Chaz Seale as vice chairman, formalizing the role he has held with the firm for the past several months. Mr. Seale has been an outside advisor to Trust Title Co.'s subsidiary TT Lender Solutions, a national construction loan management service provider, and played a role in its transition to loss mitigation and portfolio restructuring. Prior to joining Trust Title, Mr. Seale was senior vice president, mortgage project officer and director of nationwide construction-to-permanent and strategic alliances at Wachovia Mortgage FSB.

NetMore America Inc., a retail and wholesale mortgage banker based in Walla Walla, Wash., has hired Michele Sophia Newsham as its executive vice president, operations. Ms. Newsham brings to this new position over 20 years of national operation management experience within the mortgage industry with a strong focus on process design, efficiency modeling and team building. She will be based at NetMore's operations center in Clackamas, Ore. In her new role, Ms. Newsham is responsible for national operations for wholesale lending and the company's professional branch system. Most recently, she was the vice president, national operations at Senior Lending Network, Melville, N.Y. Before that she was senior vice president, national wholesale operations at American Brokers Conduit, the wholesale unit of American Home Mortgage, Melville. NetMore America funded its first loan in October 2007. Last year, it had volume of $586 million and is expecting to triple that this year. January 2009 mortgage production was over $126 million and for the year, NetMore America is projecting volume of over $1.50 billion.

The Austin, Texas-based Amherst Securities Group L.P., a broker-dealer specializing in residential mortgage-backed securities, said it has hired executives to expand its reach in securitized products. Joining the firm are Andrew Beal, managing director, agency collateralized mortgage obligation trading and Kenneth Dinovo, senior vice president, agency CMO structuring and trading. Also joining the firm are Daniel Farrell, senior managing director, structured products group; and Mark J. Castiglione, managing director, structured products group. Mr. Beal - who will be specializing in secondary and new issue CMOs for Amherst -previously worked at Merrill Lynch for 12 years, where he traded CMOs with a focus on secondary and new issue fixed and derivatives. Mr. Dinovo - who will be responsible for structuring and trading CMOs for Amherst - previously worked at Merrill Lynch in the agency CMO area, where he traded new issues, ran the new issue business and served as head structurer. Mr. Farrell, the former founder of a venture capital firm, and Mr. Castiglione, a former hedge fund manager, will help develop Amherst's non-mortgage asset-backed securities and structured finance business.

Residential Finance Corp., Columbus, Ohio, a nationwide lender specializing in Federal Housing Administration-insured mortgage refinancing, has hired Darren S. Fleishman to fill the newly created position of chief financial officer. In this position, Mr. Fleishman will lead the company's finance and accounting team and oversee all aspects of financial planning and strategic growth for the home mortgage lender. Most recently, he led the consulting group, Stein Fleishman, and earlier served as first vice president of corporate development at ABN AMRO/LaSalle Bank. Mr. Fleishman also served as a senior level consultant at The Cambridge Group and Gemini Consulting/The MAC Group.

Tim Wilson is the new president of affiliated businesses for The Long & Foster Cos., Chantilly, Va. In this position, he oversees Long & Foster Real Estate Inc., Prosperity Mortgage Co., Long & Foster Insurance Agency Inc., and Long & Foster Settlement Services. Mr. Wilson replaces Dave Stevens, who was recently promoted to president at The Long & Foster Cos. Most recently, Mr. Wilson was executive vice president and director of wholesale lending at Wachovia Bank, Charlotte, N.C. and before that, group senior vice president and national loan manager for World Savings & Loan, Oakland, Calif.

Apartment Investment and Management Co., Denver has promoted Tim Beaudin to president and chief operating officer and David Robertson to president and chief investment officer. Mr. Beaudin will continue to be responsible for property operations, redevelopment, construction services and information technology. Mr. Robertson also will become chief financial officer effective March 1, 2009, replacing Tom Herzog, who is resigning effective that date. Mr. Herzog will continue in an advisory capacity to Aimco following his departure. The timing of the CFO change is to accommodate the filing of the firm's 10-K form. The moves are being made as part of a management consolidation at the real estate investment trust brought on by the company's reduced scale and scope of activities.

Echo Loans, Foothill Ranch, Calif., announced today that Paul Rodriguez has been promoted to president of the company. The company's primary business focus is on the restructuring of unsustainable home loans through an 11-step loss mitigation process. Mr. Rodriguez's responsibilities will be all facets of the company's operations including production, development of products and services, recruitment and staffing. Mr. Rodriguez said "These are very challenging times for homeowners and lenders and we think we can play a key role in assisting consumers in keeping their homes and at the same time assist the lender in maintaining a return on their investment." His most recent positions were as executive vice president of Sage Credit Co., managing director of Quick Loan Funding Inc. and chief executive of Wall St. Funding Inc.

Gabe Minton, the former Mortgage Bankers Association vice president of industry technology and most recently chief operating officer at LOS vendor Mortgage Cadence, has joined Motivity Solutions Inc., a provider of optimization and risk mitigation software for the mortgage industry, as its chief strategy officer. In his new position, Mr. Minton is responsible for the overall strategic sales marketing and licensing of Motivity's products, third party alliances and strategic initiatives. Together with the engineering team, he will assist in further strengthening and expanding the foundation of their products and services. Also, in working closely with Motivity chief executive Tyler Sherman, Mr. Minton will create the architecture for smart imaging, e-mortgages, increased data integrity, and security to strengthen the positioning of Motivity's technology.

Millard Fuller, who co-founded affordable housing concern Habitat for Humanity International but split from the organization in 2005, died Feb. 3 after a brief illness. Mr. Fuller, 74, founded the Americus, Georgia-based Habitat in 1976 with his wife, Linda. When he left Habitat he started the Fuller Center for Housing, which also is based in Americus.

The co-chief executive officer of New York Mortgage Trust Inc., David A. Akre, has resigned from the company, effective immediately. Steven R. Mumma, who had been co-CEO, president and chief financial officer, is now the company's sole CEO, while retaining his other positions. Mr. Akre was one of the founders of NYMT and held the co-CEO position from when the company went public in 2004. Until the first quarter of 2007, NYMT had been a wholesale and retail mortgage lender. Now the company is a real estate investment trust that invests in mortgage-backed securities and adjustable-rate mortgages.

Jim Miller, a former managing director at J.P. Morgan Chase, has joined First American Information and Outsourcing Solutions as managing director of operations for the company's outsourcing and technology business lines. In his new role, Mr. Miller will be responsible for the unit's seven businesses, which include national default outsourcing, national claims outsourcing, loss mitigation services, loan production solutions, real estate owned servicing, default technologies and global offshore services. Mr. Miller has nearly 25 years of experience in prime, nonprime, and home equity servicing. He managed J.P. Morgan Chase's default servicing operations for the past three years.

BTIG LLC, a New York institutional broker dealer specializing in equity trading and related brokerage services, is launching a fixed income group led by former UBS and Citigroup executives, as well as a new team to expand into mortgage- and asset-backed securities trading. The company said it has hired Jon Bass and John Purcell as co-heads of global fixed income. Mr. Bass most recently was head of fixed income client management at UBS Investment Bank and Mr. Purcell most recently was head of global fixed income syndicates and North America capital markets at Citigroup.

MountainView Capital Holdings, Denver, has formed a new unit to provide mortgage servicing rights hedge advisory services. MountainView has hired industry veteran Gregory Harris as president of MountainView Risk Advisors to lead the risk management and hedge advisory company. Mr. Harris has over 19 years of experience in hedging the risks associated with MSR, most recently as manager of the MSR hedge program on the $500 billion plus portfolio at Washington Mutual. MountainView said its 19-year history in the brokerage and third party evaluation servicers for the MSR industry make the company well qualified to add hedge advisory services.

The former executive vice president and chief financial officer at Freddie Mac, Anthony "Buddy" Piszel, has been named as chief financial officer and treasurer at the First American Corp., Santa Ana, Calif. Mr. Piszel was with Freddie Mac starting in November 2006 and left the company following its being placed into conservatorship in September 2008. Before joining Freddie Mac, he was the chief financial officer for Health Net Inc., and before that he held a number of senior financial positions at Prudential Financial Inc., with his final job being senior vice president and corporate controller from 1998 to 2004. At First American, Mr. Piszel will oversee the financial reporting group, capital markets activities and investor relations.

Broadpoint DESCAP, the mortgage-backed security/asset-backed security trading division of Broadpoint Capital Inc., New York, has launched a new repurchase desk and expanded its structured products group. The repurchase desk will be headed by Joanmarie Pusateri, a former Bear Stearns managing director. Before joining Broadpoint, Ms. Pusateri worked for 22 years building her career at Bear Stearns with an emphasis on fixed-income trade settlements. In 2003, Ms. Pusateri joined Bear Stearns Asset Management where she was a managing director responsible for creating and managing a multibillion-dollar repurchase book for three fixed-income/structured product hedge funds. Broadpoint Capital is the broker-dealer subsidiary of Broadpoint Securities Group Inc.

Richard D. Parsons, known most recently as being the chief executive of Time Warner, is returning to a high level post in the banking industry, becoming the chairman of Citigroup, effective Feb. 23. He is currently the lead director of Citigroup's board. In 1988, during a tumultuous time in the thrift industry, Mr. Parsons joined Dime Savings Bank of New York, first as chief operating officer, than as chairman and chief executive, a role he held until 1995. That year he became president of Time Warner. Dime was acquired by Washington Mutual in 2002; Washington Mutual was taken over by government regulators late last year and is now part of JPMorgan Chase. Mr. Parsons replaces Sir Win Bischoff, who briefly served as acting chief executive of Citigroup before becoming chairman in December 2007. Citigroup chief executive Vikram Pandit cited Mr. Parsons' ability to turn around Dime and Time Warner as being key to help Citigroup execute its plan to split into two companies.