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LoanPerformance Inc. has hired Federal Reserve Board senior economist Paul S. Calem, whose research on mortgage credit risk has guided the Fed in developing new risk-based capital standards for the largest U.S. banks under the proposed Basel Capital Accord.Dr. Calem will be vice president for product development at LoanPerformance, a mortgage data and research firm based in San Francisco. He worked in the Fed's division of research and statistics for 10 years. Before his Basel-related work, Dr. Calem was co-developer of the Fed's statistical analysis procedures for fair-lending examinations.

Freddie Mac is losing its treasurer, Louise Herrle, to General Motors Acceptance Corp., which is in the throes of forming a new holding company for its mortgage division.Ms. Herrle is expected to play a key role in the new holding company -- which does not yet have a name -- tapping the capital markets. Her title at the GMAC holding company will be managing director, corporate finance group/treasurer. Her last day at Freddie Mac is Sept. 15. (See the Sept. 13 issue of National Mortgage News for more information on GMAC's plans for the holding company.) Freddie Mac can be found on the Web at http://www.freddiemac.com.

Countrywide Financial Corp., the nation's largest residential lender, has named former San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank president Robert T. Parry to its board.Mr. Parry, who served as president and chief executive officer of the San Francisco Fed for 18 years, was also a member of the Federal Open Market Committee, which sets the target for the overnight federal funds rate. Meanwhile, Countrywide's stock split two-for-one before the market opened on Tuesday.

David Bowers has been named director of the Washington, D.C., office of The Enterprise Foundation, which promotes affordable housing for low-income families.Mr. Bowers was most recently employed by the AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust, where he was responsible for a single-family mortgage program in Washington and New York City. He was previously a financial and program adviser for the Treasury Department's Community Development Financial Institutions Fund. The Enterprise Foundation can be found on the Web at http://www.enterprisefoundation.org.

The Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago has named investment banker Mike Thomas as its new president and chief executive officer.He replaces Mortgage Partnership Finance program founder Alex Pollock, who retired this past summer. For almost 21 years Mr. Thomas, 53, worked for First Chicago Corp., a money center bank. When he left First Chicago in 1994 he was chief financial officer. He joined investment banker Lazard Freres & Co. in 1995 as a managing director. (Early in his career, Fannie Mae chairman Franklin Raines also worked at Lazard.) Since 2001 Mr. Thomas has been a consultant. The Secura Group aided the FHLBank in its search. The MPF program competes directly against Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Mortgage banking veteran Richard F. Sommer has been named chief executive officer of HomeGain Inc., an Emeryville, Calif.-based provider of customized services to online buyers and sellers of homes.Mr. Sommer was previously senior vice president of business development for the mortgage banking unit of IndyMac Bank Inc. and president of international real estate operations for HomeStore Inc., the parent of Homestore.com. HomeGain, a privately held company, can be found online at http://www.homegain.com.

Michael D. Youngblood has been named chief of asset-backed securities research at Friedman, Billings, Ramsey & Co., Arlington, Va.Dr. Youngblood was most recently head of mortgage research at GMAC-Residential Funding Corp. "He is widely respected for developing the first mortgage-backed securities conduit, the first option-adjusted spread analytics, and the first total-rate-of-return index for commercial MBS," said Martin S. Friedman, FBR's director of research. The company can be found online at http://www.fbr.com.

Countrywide Home Loans Inc., Calabasas, Calif., has announced three new appointments in the company's Consumer Markets Division.Dan Hanson, an executive vice president at Countrywide, has been named managing director of distributed retail, while senior vice president James Hecht has been promoted to EVP of national operations, and senior vice president and regional manager Mike Querrey has been named SVP of sales development. A 26-year real estate veteran, Mr. Hanson will be responsible for managing the production for Countrywide's distributed retail divisions, overseeing the company's network of 600 sales offices nationwide, Countrywide said. Mr. Hecht will serve as the Consumer Markets Division's primary liaison to the chief operating officer and oversee operations-related policy and procedures. Mr. Querrey will be responsible for increasing purchase market share and for recruiting sales resources in each of the CMD's business units. Countrywide can be found online at http://www.countrywide.com.

Fannie Mae has announced that its chief credit officer, Adolfo Marzol, will assume the post of senior vice president of strategy and competitive analysis on Sept. 1.Mr. Marzol, who has held the post of chief credit officer since 1998, said he had expressed a desire to move to a new position and that Fannie Mae had accommodated him. "I am pleased to be able to make this change at a time when our credit portfolio is in exceptionally good shape and our credit outlook for 2004 is very favorable," he said. Timothy Howard, Fannie Mae's vice chairman and chief financial officer, said the company will move ahead with a plan to shift responsibility for transactional risk management to its business units while strengthening the integration of its financial risk assessment capabilities at the corporate level. "As part of these changes, Marzol's responsibilities will be divided among the enhanced credit teams within each business unit, the Risk Policy Committee chaired by Howard, and a newly created finance department called Credit Finance," Fannie Mae said. The government-sponsored enterprise can be found online at http://www.fanniemae.com.

Downey Financial Corp. president and chief executive Marangal Domingo resigned from the California-based thrift late Thursday after just seven months on the job.The company said in a statement that Mr. Domingo "has decided to pursue other interests." Company chief financial officer Tom Prince said Mr. Domingo's last official day on the job is Aug. 31, but noted that the CEO is currently on vacation. Mr. Prince declined further comment. Daniel D. Rosenthal, who served as Downey's president and CEO from late 1998 until Mr. Domingo became CEO in February of this year, was immediately reinstated in his old job. Since February Mr. Rosenthal has served as a director of Downey and managed its real estate investment business. According to the Quarterly Data Report, Downey is the nation's 42nd-largest residential funder.