Based in Milan, Bergman was previously Deputy Head of Structured Finance. He joined Scope in September 2017 and has more than 12 years’ experience of structured finance credit analysis, having previously worked at Moody’s for more than 10 years. Bergman has broad and deep analytical experience across a range of structured credit asset classes throughout Europe, including NPL transactions and securitisations backed by mortgage and consumer loans and loans to small and medium-sized enterprises.

Before his career in structured credit analysis, Bergman spent nine years in the leasing industry in a range of roles, including head of origination at GE Commercial Finance and ABB Financial Services in Italy and Sweden.

“Over the past few years, Scope has built formidable structured finance capabilities. The team now rates and monitors over EUR 70bn of European structured finance debt. Coverage is growing rapidly, accounting for over 10% of the market by rated issuance volumes in 2018 – including all 14 of the GACS-eligible securitisations coming out of Italy. I’m very much looking forward to taking Scope’s structured finance franchise forward and building on the solid momentum we have,” Bergman said.

Antonio Casado is taking over as Deputy Head of Structured Finance. Casado is currently an executive director in the structured finance team in Berlin. He has extensive experience of structured finance and credit analysis, having rated a range of securitisations across ABS, SME, RMBS and trade receivables as well as covered bonds. He joined Scope in May 2017 following almost six years at Fitch, where he was latterly head of the Spanish ABS and SME CLO teams. His prior experience included working in real estate investing, project finance and as a corporate finance analyst.

Scope Group employs more than 220 staff spread across seven offices in Europe including Berlin, Frankfurt, London, Madrid, Milan, Oslo and Paris. Registered as an ECAI with ESMA since 2011 Scope Ratings is Europe’s largest rating agency, challenging the North American orthodoxy of a one-size-fits-all methodology with a European alternative of non-mechanistic, qualitative credit assessment.