After 16 years as head of Fitch Ratings' public power group, Alan Spen will step down at the beginning of next month.
Spen, who cited personal reasons for his exit, will continue to work four days a week in the public power group in New York, but will cede his duties as chief of the group to Karl Pfeil, who has been with the rating agency for nearly nine years.
"I've been in charge of the public power effort since 1989 -- since I've been at Fitch," Spen, 54, said in an interview yesterday. "Karl is going to be taking the lead starting July 1."
However, "I'm going to continue to work very actively within our ... group. I'm not going away," he said. "The goal now is to support Karl as he takes over the reins and runs with it."
Spen has 25 years of experience analyzing and evaluating the public power credit sector, beginning at Standard & Poor's, where he started his career.
After that, Spen spent time at Drexel Burnham Lambert as director of municipal bond research, Merrill Lynch Capital Markets as a senior municipal analyst, and Lehman Brothers as an investment banker.
The analyst earned a bachelor's degree in finance from Florida State University and an MBA from the City University of New York.
Spen is credited with helping develop Fitch's competitive indicator, which was a rating tool the agency used to help investors gauge a public utility's competitiveness compared to both investor-owned and other public power utilities. Fitch no longer uses the tool.
Pfeil joined Fitch in 1996 and since then "has been involved in analyzing all Fitch-rated public power credits and has assisted in the dramatic growth of Fitch's public power ratings business," according to a Fitch statement.
The agency maintains 140 underlying ratings on over $100 billion of outstanding long-term debt, Pfeil said in an interview.
"In the last five years, Fitch's public power ratings coverage has increased more than 300%," he said. "We rate close to 80% of all public power bonds that are issued in the market place in any one year. In 2004 we were in that ballpark, as well as 2003, which was one of the highest issuance years on record."
Before joining Fitch in 1996, Pfeil was an assistant vice president at the then-AMBAC Indemnity Corp., where he was responsible for the surveillance and underwriting of public power, water and sewer, airport, and tax-backed issuers for bond insurance.
He earned a bachelor's degree in finance from Rowan University and a master of public administration degree from New York University. (c) 2005 The Bond Buyer and SourceMedia, Inc. All rights reserved. http://www.bondbuyer.com http://www.sourcemedia.com
