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Former Ginnie Mae president Joseph Murin and former FHA commissioner Brian Montgomery are launching a Washington consulting firm to provide advisory services for mortgage company executives. Mr. Murin said the firm aims to help clients operate strategically in a business environment where markets and the regulatory landscape are shifting. The Collingwood Group already has an office on Pennsylvania Ave. and it has merged with Capital Financial Solutions, which was founded by two former Fannie Mae executives. Mr. Montgomery said the merger will give Collingwood clients access to expertise in fraud prevention, risk management analytics, mortgage fulfillment services, REO and loan modification management. The former Ginnie Mae and Federal Housing Administration officials recently left their government posts and they cannot directly contact those agencies on behalf of clients for one year.

GMAC-ResCap has entered into an arrangement with Mountain Funding LLC to provide asset servicing and consulting advice for some of the REO assets in GMAC-ResCap's Business Capital Group portfolio in a deal that will put a former ResCap-BCG executive at the head of a Mountain unit. The arrangement, which was completed through Mountain's asset management affiliate, the Charlotte, N.C.-based Mountain Special Servicing LLC, has been in process for several months. "There were no layoffs associated with this transaction. A small group of employees left ResCap to immediately join Mountain Funding as per agreement between both firms," said a spokesperson for GMAC-ResCap. Mountain Funding has absorbed 14 members of senior management from the REO asset management group. Joining Mountain Special Servicing as managing director will be GMAC-ResCap's former head of ResCap-BCG REO management, Joel Kaul, who will head up the company's residential asset management group. Combined with its existing portfolio, Mountain Special Servicing now has 90 assets under management, totaling $1 billion in unpaid principal balance. The assets are diversified over 20 states and include residential land development, residential lot development/sale, housing construction/sale, commercial land development, subperforming retail centers, fractured condos, apartments, and resort development. ResCap, the fifth largest mortgage servicer, said it continues to provide mortgage servicing and subservicing for a portfolio of approximately 2.6 million mortgage loans.

Senate Banking Committee chairman Christopher Dodd, D- Conn., has been diagnosed with prostate cancer and he will have an operation during August when the Senate is not in session. Sen. Dodd said the cancer was discovered in an early state and his "prognosis is excellent." After the Senate adjourns, "I am going to have surgery. After a brief recuperation at home, I'll be back at work," Sen. Dodd said. The Connecticut senator is running for re-election next year. Sen. Dodd also is a key player in the Obama Administration's efforts to restructure regulation of the financial system and reform health care.

The Real Estate Roundtable has named Daniel M. Neidich, co-CEO of New York-based Dune Capital Management LP, as its new chairman. He succeeds Hilton Hotels president and CEO Christopher J. Nassetta. Mr. Neidich said the most significant issue facing him as he takes over the leadership of the group is the ongoing liquidity and refinancing crisis that is forcing real estate owners into bankruptcy and pushing up delinquency rates on commercial mortgages. The remaining executive board members are: secretary, Robert S. Taubman, chairman, president and CEO of Taubman Centers Inc.; and treasurer, Jeffrey Schwartz, chairman of Global Logistic Properties. The Roundtable's current policy agenda includes a "Five Point Plan" for restoring liquidity to the credit market. While some of those steps have already been enacted, the group said additional policy action is needed to facilitate loan workouts and restructurings through temporary changes in the tax rules governing real estate mortgage investment conduits. Also needed is an overhaul of policies governing foreign investment in U.S. real estate. "The debt markets, including the CMBS market, are still generally dysfunctional, transaction volume remains at virtually zero, and commercial property values remain under downward pressure," said Mr. Neidich.

Tom Neary has resigned as executive vice president and senior managing director of Residential Capital Corp., effective at the end of July. Mr. Neary joined the nation's seventh-largest residential originator a year ago and was brought in by ResCap chairman and CEO Tom Marano. "He resigned for personal reasons," a company spokeswoman confirmed to this newspaper. He is responsible for managing the business risk for ResCap's mortgage servicing rights and oversees its pipeline hedging activities. ResCap is an affiliate of GMAC Financial Services.

Jefferies continues to expand its residential/commercial mortgage- and asset-backed securities effort with the hiring of a new managing director and head of the company's MBS/ABS/CMBS group in Boston. Mark Plansky, who previously worked for Barclays for eight years, was hired to lead the Boston securitization group. Jefferies said its MBS/ABS/CMBS group now includes more than 60 sales, trading and origination professionals in the U.S. and London, including former RBS Greenwich Capital CMBS researcher Lisa Pendergast, whom it hired in June as head of CMBS strategy and risk.

Southwest Securities Inc., Dallas, has expanded its taxable fixed-income trading desks with two mortgage-related appointments. Steve Palmer has been named senior vice president, mortgage trading in Southwest's New York office. In addition, Southwest has named Derek Rose as senior vice president, asset-backed and commercial mortgage-backed securities in its Chicago office. Most recently, Mr. Palmer was an executive director with JPMorgan, where he traded non-agency fixed rate securities and unsecuritized residential loans. Mr. Rose most recently was an ABS/CMBS trader and director of securitization syndicate in RBC Capital Markets' New York office.

Freddie Mac has named Charles "Ed" Haldeman Jr., a former mutual fund executive, its new chief executive office, effective this August. About a month ago his name leaked out in relation to the CEO job and was considered a done deal but needed the approval of Freddie's regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency. FHFA signed off on the nomination this week. Mr. Haldeman, 60, recently stepped down as chairman of Putnam Investment Management after a seven-year term. He succeeds John Koskinen who had been serving as interim CEO since March. Freddie Mac, which continues to lose money, has been operating under a government conservatorship since September. It's expected to release second quarter earnings some time in August.

Fortress Investment Group, which controls a mid-sized subprime servicing operation, has hired former Fannie Mae chief Daniel Mudd to be its new chief executive. Mr. Mudd was forced out of the money-losing Fannie Mae in September when the company and its sister firm, Freddie Mac, were placed into separate conservatorships. Mr. Mudd became CEO of the GSE in 2004 in the wake of a $6 billion accounting scandal where the firm's former management understated its prior years earnings. Under Mr. Mudd's stewardship Fannie became a large investor in MBS backed by alternative-A credit loans. The declining value of those securities has forced the GSE to book multibillion-dollar losses. A few years back Fortress bought Centex Home Equity of Dallas, once one of the nation's largest subprime lenders. Centex changed its name to Nationstar Mortgage and eventually ceased originating new loans but remains as a servicer. Mr. Mudd will take the reins of the publicly traded Fortress on Aug. 11. He is currently a director of the company. Fortress, whose shares trade for $3, manages $26.5 billion in assets.

Catherine Cruz Wojtasik, a Democratic lobbyist for the Mortgage Bankers Association, is leaving the trade group to take a job on Capitol Hill. A MBA spokeswoman confirmed her departure noting that it will hire a replacement for Ms. Wojtasik. It's believed that she has accepted a position with the Senate Banking Committee but at press time it could not be confirmed. Meanwhile Cheryl Malloy, who handles multifamily issues for MBA, is retiring soon but will stay on as consultant through September.