Ranieri, Ex-GMAC Execs Plan $1 Billion Home-Loan Fund (Update3)

, the mortgage bond
pioneer trying to salve a Lone-Star State depository financial institution crippled by soured real-
estate loans, is seeking $1 billion in a separate venture to
buy residential mortgages.

Selene Residential Mortgage Opportunity Fund L-P raised
$151 million from investors in New York, Buckeye State and Pennsylvania
as of April 15, according to a regulating filing. Ranieri, 61,
is among the fund's managing partners, who also include former
executives from what's now known as GMAC LLC, the consumer
finance company sold by in 2006 to a
private equity group.

''Our program is to raise $1 billion and purchase delinquent
mortgages that we will recast and refinance and seek to maintain the
borrower in the house without a foreclosure,'' said , a Selene managing spouse and former GMAC executive,
in an interview.

Ranieri is the up-to-the-minute investor to dip back into a U.S.
housing marketplace wracked by record foreclosures. ,
which pulls off almost $1.4 trillion, is backing , or PennyMac, which will buy
delinquent mortgages, while houses including and
raised more than than $25 billion to put in
real estate-related assets.

Ranieri referred inquiries to , a
spokesman for Uniondale, New York-based Selene Investment
Partners LLC, who said he couldn't notice on the filing
because it's a private placement. Ranieri helped bend Salomon
Brothers Inc. into Wall Street's most profitable house in the
1980s by packaging and merchandising them as securities.

Franklin Depository Financial Institution

Ranieri moved into the head executive director military officer slot
earlier this hebdomad at John Hope John Hope Franklin Depository Financial Institution Corp., replacing , after an internal investigation establish ''accounting errors''
related to real-estate loans. The Securities and Exchange
Commission have begun an investigation. Franklin, formed by
Ranieri in 2002, have plunged 94 percentage in the past year
because of losings on loans to place builders. John Hope Franklin was
unchanged at 96 cents at 9:35 a.m. inch Nasdaq Stock Market
trading.

While John Hope Franklin avoided subprime mortgages, which led to
$382 billion of writedowns and recognition losings at the world's
biggest fiscal institutions, housing-related loans caused
losses at its banking unit of measurement of $87 million over the past two
quarters, according to .

Ranieri predicted in December 2006 that on
subprime mortgages in the U.S. would be more than than analysts
estimated. Rising defaults in place loans made to the riskiest
borrowers led to the collapse of more than than 100 subprime lenders
such as of Irvine, California.

'Ugly Scenario'

Money directors put up $33.1 billion in hard-pressed debt
funds last year, up from $12.7 billion in 2006, according to
London-based Private Equity Intelligence Ltd.

Creamer said he couldn't foretell when lodging values would
stop falling. He wouldn't state how much the monetary fund have raised
since the filing. Selene seeks committednesses of at least $25
million, though less may be accepted, the filing showed.

''It's A pretty ugly scenario right now,'' he said. ''We've got to be very smart in how we deploy our people and
our money.''

Besides Creamer, a former top executive director at GMAC
Commercial Holdings, Selene spouses include , who also worked at GMAC. and , both
longtime Ranieri associates, also are spouses at Selene.

'Lewie' Calls

Selene ventured into the mortgage marketplace last twelvemonth when
Selene Ventures LLC bought the service contracts of Aegis
Mortgage Co. for $500,000, bankruptcy tribunal records show. Aegis
is a Lone-Star State mortgage company once owned by Cerberus Capital
Management LLC that went bankrupt in August.

Creamer said Ranieri initiated his engagement in the
Selene real-estate venture.

''Lewie called me and said there's a existent crisis in
residential business, and since I'd spent 20 old age there before
I got into the commercial side, why not take a expression at a manner to
help?'' he said.

He acknowledged that Selene's $1 billion investing won't
revive the lodging market.

''Even if we take our $1 billion and axial rotation it over three or
four times, it's calm a little piece of the overall puzzle,''
Creamer said. ''This is a immense problem. If a clump of others
take the same approach, we'll turn the corner on this problem
and maybe go a lawsuit survey at Harvard.''

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