Lewis Ranieri, the mortgage bond pioneer, is seeking $1 billion to buy residential mortgages.
His Selene Residential Mortgage Opportunity Fund LP raised $151 million from investors in New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania as of April 15, according to a regulatory filing. Mr. Ranieri, 61, is among the fund's managing partners.
"Our plan is to raise $1 billion and buy delinquent mortgages that we will recast and refinance and try to keep the borrower in the house without a foreclosure," said David Creamer, a Selene managing partner and the former chairman of GMAC Commercial Mortgage Corp. (now Capmark Financial Group Inc.).
Mr. Ranieri helped turn Salomon Brothers Inc. (now a part of Citigroup Inc.) into Wall Street's most profitable firm in the 1980s by packaging mortgages into securities. He moved into the chief executive slot last week at Franklin Bank Corp. in Houston, succeeding Anthony Nocella, after an internal probe found accounting errors related to real-estate loans.
