Mosaic builds up its US transactional liability team with two M&A specialists

Mosaic has recruited two mergers and acquisitions specialists as it builds out its transactional liability team in the US.

Stavan Desai and Katherine Spenner join Mosaic as senior vice presidents, with Desai becoming M&A team leader and Spenner taking the position of chief legal officer for M&A.

Both are based in New York and report to William Monat, its global head of M&A.

Desai is responsible for Mosaic’s underwriting team in North America. He was formerly a senior underwriter for AIG, with a focus on transitional risk insurance for complex M&A and secondary transactions. He has also served as a senior attorney at Schulte Roth & Zabel, where he concentrated his domestic and cross-border practice on private equity, M&A, leveraged buyouts, and alternative asset management transactions.

Spenner previously served as a senior transactional risk insurance underwriter at Everest Insurance. She has nearly a decade of experience representing public and private-equity clients in a wide range of complex domestic and cross-border M&A transactions at White & Case and Torys.

In her new role Spenner helps lead Mosaic’s underwriting execution across the M&A insurance portfolio.

Monat said: “Highly skilled and thoughtful execution is critical in the M&A insurance sector, and [Desai and Spenner] each bring deep expertise that will be instrumental to our success as we build our transactional risk business.”

Since its February launch, Mosaic has assembled a team of leading underwriters to build carefully selected products in its specialty portfolio. To date, these include war, terror and political violence, political risk and cybersecurity.