Pallium Investment Management, the BMO Financial venture with industry luminaries Flavio Bartmann and Conrad Voldstad, is seeking a senior credit officer for its planned credit derivatives product company. “We are getting a rating for the venture and hiring people for it,” said an official at BMO. “We need a very experienced credit officer.”
Pallium, which is based in Jersey City, N.J., will focus on longer term credit risk, the bulk of which will be in the form of derivatives and credit derivatives. It is hoping to launch before year-end. Credit derivative product companies are highly-rated, limited-purpose companies that act as counterparties for derivatives trades. The pipeline of CDPC swelled as firms looked to offload risks generated from credit default swaps used in collateralized debt obligations.
The Pallium CDPC will include a credit support annex, which the official said is a common way for the counterparties to reduce their exposure. Pallium will focus on a broad range of products, the official noted. “We want to be more operational and conform to market practices as much as possible,” he added. Still, the firm is waiting for a number of pieces to fall into place.