Damutz, Santoro join Kroll’s expanding municipal ratings team

Kroll Bond Rating Agency has hired two public finance veterans for its municipal ratings team, the firm announced Wednesday.

Ted Damutz and Lina Santoro joined Kroll in May as directors in the public finance department.

“The addition of two talented analysts like Ted and Lina reflects our growing footprint in public finance,” Karen Daly, senior managing director and head of the public finance ratings group, told The Bond Buyer. “We are delighted to have them join us.”

Damutz, who works out of the New York office, is responsible for providing analysis on a broad range of municipal credits. He joined KBRA from BondLink, where he was a regional director.

Previously, he served as treasury services manager for the city of Raleigh, North Carolina, where he oversaw debt, cash and investments. Prior to that, he worked for almost 20 years in the public finance department of Moody’s Investors Service as a senior credit officer, head of the municipal utility task force and manager for the Chicago office and Midwest region.

He also has worked for Brown Brothers Harriman and the United Nations in New York City.

Damutz is currently chair of the Southern Municipal Finance Society and is a longtime member on the Board of Governors of the National Federation of Municipal Analysts. Previously, he served on the board of the Chicago Municipal Analyst Society, including a term as president.

He has been named to the Smith’s annual All-Star team 14 times, most recently to the first team for municipal lease analysis. The Moody’s Foundation has honored him with its Global Volunteer Award.

Damutz has a B.A. from Pitzer College in Claremont, California; an Master of Arts from Central European University in Budapest, Hungary; and an Master of Science from the London School of Economics.

Santoro, also a director in the firm’s New York office, analyzes a wide variety of municipal credits from across the United States.

Prior to joining Kroll, she was a credit portfolio manager in TD Bank’s commercial lending group, where she reviewed the credit quality of states, local school districts and municipal utility borrowers.

Before that, she worked at Fitch Ratings for over 20 years, beginning in the corporates group analyzing investor-owned utility credits before moving into public finance, with a focus on municipal utility and electric cooperative credits.

Santoro began her career as a power analyst for the New York Power Authority and later worked as a credit analyst for Financial Security Assurance, a municipal bond insurer.

She is a longtime member of the National Federation of Municipal Analysts as well as the Northeast Women in Public Finance.

Santoro earned a B.A. from Queens College and an MBA from St. John’s University in Queens, New York.