A leading real estate auction firm appointed Elizabeth O’Brien managing director and senior vice president Tuesday, placing her in a position to focus on growing the firm’s residential capital markets business. O’Brien possesses 17 years of experience on the client side of mortgage and real estate investments and most recently worked at Citigroup (C) as director of mortgage finance within its fixed-income division. She starts here new position with Auction.com immediately and will be based in the company’s in New York office. During that time, O’Brien managed resecuritizations and liquidating transactions valued as high as $10 billion. She also helped the bank manage its legacy asset portfolio. “Beth’s expertise enables us to build on the success of our residential foreclosures and commercial notes platforms and expand into residential notes,” said Auction.com CEO Jeff Frieden in a statement. “Her track record in distressed mortgage finance makes her a driving force behind our ongoing growth as the world’s preeminent real estate auctioneer.” O’Brien also served at Goldman Sachs (GS) New York and Hong Kong offices in the real estate principal investment area prior to joining Citi. Write to Kerri Panchuk.