Washington Mutual, Seattle, has made some personnel changes to enhance its capital markets efforts. In one change, David Beck, chief investment officer, has been named executive vice president of WaMu's capital markets group. The group's activities include the marketing, trading and structuring of loans held for sale. Mr. Beck, who joined WaMu in April 2003, will continue to report to Tom Casey, WaMu's CFO, the company reports. Mr. Beck said, "As we continue to build our capabilities to reflect the growth and size of our organization, we have a great opportunity to leverage our scale in our capital markets organization." As well, Richard Fisher has been promoted to executive vice president of WaMu's commercial capital markets group. Working with Mr. Beck, Mr. Fisher will lead a team that is responsible for commercial loan product pricing and development, secondary marketing, securitization, syndication and portfolio management. Mr. Fisher was previously WaMu's manager of commercial secondary marketing.
