Said to be a casualty of the MBIA-Ambac dissolution, Arturo Cifuentes left Ambac last week to join collateralized bond obligation fund manager Triton Partners.
According to sources, other migrations from earlier in the year – including the departures of Jim Wang, Bernard Lau and Hong Jiang – were spawned by troubles associated with the joint venture.
Cifuentes, who officially starts work on May 15, joins Triton as a managing director and co-head of the company’s structured-product group.
At Triton, Cifuentes is reunited with former colleague Jonathon Polansky, who came over to Triton last fall from Moody’s Investors Service. Before joining Ambac, Cifuentes worked at Moody’s from 1996 to 1999, where he is credited with developing Moody’s core methodology of rating collateralized debt obligations, according to Triton.
Triton has issued four CBOs and is likely to issue another sometime this year, said Polansky. However, specifics were unavailable, as the fund has barely reached the drawing board, he said.
Triton currently has nearly $1.5 billion of structured products under management.