Asset Securitization Report articles from April 2007

Asset Securitization Report archives from April 2007

Whispers.
April 2, 2007... UBS has made reappointments for several of its managing directors on its global fixed-income management team. In New York City, the investment bank appointed Mostafiz Shahmohammed as head of the credit ABS business. Since Shahmohammed vacated...

Lawmakers consider mandatory HEL modification, bailouts.
April 2, 2007... If additional states - and potentially the federal government - follow in the footsteps of Ohio, financially stapped U.S. homeowners may have more options to refinance their mortgages. The state plans to issue municipal bonds in order to fund a...

Wells submits flawed reports.
April 2, 2007... Wells Fargo Bank provided inaccurate monthly reports to investors regarding the level of delinquencies in loan pools it oversaw last year, according to a disclosure made by the bank inside a recent pooling and servicing agreement. Wells's...

Domino's deal ups IP deal sizes.
April 2, 2007... Lately Domino's Pizza is looking a lot like an overachiever. The quick-serve restaurant and delivery chain is doing more than $5 billion in global retail sales, which should go a long way to support its ambitions for rapid growth from its...

Spring cleaning in ABS puts BLX under scrutiny.
April 2, 2007... Dust and debris are beginning to clear from recent volatility in the subprime MBS market, as recent pricings attest. The mood seems better, and although participants do not think the market has reached bottom, they say conditions have stopped...

To whom the finger points ...
April 2, 2007... While the notion of Wall Street as the big, bad subprime mortgage vaccum gained steam in Congressional hearings and the popular press last week, some CDO managers say that they, along with other home equity loan buyers, are just as much a...

New Primoris program bets on corporate credit.
April 2, 2007... Deutsche Bank is bringing to the market the first series of notes to be issued from asset manager State Street Global Advisors - Primoris CDO 2007-1, a long/short structure. Primoris obtained ratings for both seven-year and 10-year transactions...

Calyon taps Herzog for loans.
April 2, 2007... Calyon Americas, the corporate and investment banking arm of French bank Credit Agricole Group, announced the hire of Gary Herzog as head of its loan syndications group in the Americas. Herzog will report to Jerome Le Jamtel, managing director...

U.S. Central debuts ABCP conduit program.
April 2, 2007... Running a commercial paper conduit is nothing new for the U.S. Central Federal Credit Union. This perhaps explains why the company debuted on the asset-backed commercial paper market with a flexible credit arbitrage vehicle that, unlike many...

CMBS spreads continue to leak wider.
April 2, 2007... New issuance has continued to run into problems of late, though the timing of new deals was not delayed on recent new offerings. Spreads have continued their widening trend over the past two weeks in the primary markets, with the senior...

Will Europe make room for another opinion?
April 2, 2007... Dominion Bond Rating Service celebrated its first European deal last month - rating the Indus deal from Barclays Capital. Will its "we are different" stance transform DBRS into a competing player against the big three agencies? How DBRS...

CMBS gathering plays host to plenty of European players.
April 2, 2007... Information Management Network recently hosted its third European CMBS conference in London. With 600 delegates in attendance, the gathering served as a testament to the growth of the European CMBS sector. Most telling of how the market...

New insurance product makes a case through CMBS.
April 2, 2007... The use of title insurance in Europe has, so far, been limited to a few securitization deals. Some observers do not see its use in a market that they believe already has adequate country-by-country title registration laws. But those who support...

Kazakh KKB returns to market, Russia's Alfa prices.
April 2, 2007... Kazkommertsbank (KKB) is returning to the structured finance market with a $500 million, 10-year legal final deal consisting of three tranches and three insurers. Merrill Lynch and WestLB are joint leads, and pricing is timed for shortly after...

European CMBS secondary market liquidity still plugged up.
April 2, 2007... While the European primary CMBS market continues to grow, secondary market trading still faces obstacles that keep the flow at a trickle, market sources said. There has been limited liquidity for traditional cash CMBS issues, and trading...

An issue from the isthmus and more RMBS from Mexico.
April 2, 2007... A Panamanian mortgage originator, La Hipotecaria, is in the market with a cross-border deal. The 29-year final, $73 million RMBS is being arranged by Descap Securities, an unfamiliar name in the arena of emerging market securitizations. XLCA is...

ECMBX moves closer to realization.
April 2, 2007... The market may soon see the much-anticipated trading platform for synthetic European CMBS, said Nathan Kirk, director of product development at Markit Group, which is one of the dealers working on the new index. The new platform ECMBX will...

Whispers.
April 9, 2007... Accounting firm Grant Thornton threw in the towel last week in auditing subprime lenders Fremont General Corp. and Accredited Home Lenders. Both lenders disclosed that Grant Thornton resigned after advising them it would need to "significantly...

BofA dominates in 1Q league manager rankings.
April 9, 2007... Sometimes, originators just want to handle their issues on their own terms - and from their own shelves. Such independent thinking, argue some, is what characterized a lot of securitization transactions in the third quarter and changed the...

Kazakh's BTA To bring 1st DPR.(Bank TuranAlem )(diversified payment rights)
April 9, 2007... Kazakhstan's Bank TuranAlem (BTA) is understood to be coming shortly with a multitranche deal backed by diversified payment rights (DPRs), according to market sources. The word is that the sole lead is Standard Chartered. This would mark the...

Issuers push CDOs to mrkt in 1Q07.
April 9, 2007... In a quarter punctuated by sharply deteriorating subprime mortgage collateral, some CDO underwriters, such as Merrill Lynch, posted substantial gains in year-over-year volume. Meanwhile, others took a noticeable turn in the opposite direction,...

Card ABS teaches lessons subprime MBS could learn.
April 9, 2007... After several weeks of reaping retribution for its scorching and somewhat precarious rise, subprime mortgage performance continues to inspire worries of spillover effects into other ABS sectors. While it is too early to definitely say whether...

As subprime lenders fall, FHA issuance to rise.
April 9, 2007... The addition of subprime mortgage behemoth New Century Financial Corp. to the growing queue of bankrupt subprime lenders has a number of home equity ABS investors wondering where, exactly, issuance is going to come from this year. New...

Some CDO managers considering TABX buckets.
April 9, 2007... The last thing ABS CDO managers want is to be compared to the TABX. For them, it is like being on par with a disowned relative. And one can only imagine how recent speculation that the price of new issue ABS CDO notes might fall in line with...

GSC opens new fund for MM CLOs.
April 9, 2007... GSC Group recently announced the close of its 13th CDO fund since April 2000. The GSC CDO VIII, LTD is a $350 million collateralized loan obligation that will invest 30% in middle-market loans and 70% in broadly syndicated leveraged loans. The...

Auto tallies show no spillover effect.
April 9, 2007... Prime auto ABS deals turned in weaker performance numbers in February, but analysts emphasized that the occurrence was more a result of seasonal factors than fundamental weakness in the auto sector. Meanwhile, performance in the subprime auto...

Risk-based pricing systems for Alt-A and subprime mortgage loans.
April 9, 2007... by: Rob Kessel, managing partner, Compass Analytics, Thomas Warrack, managing director, and Brian Vonderhorst, director, at Standard & Poor's RMBS Ratings The use of excess spread and overcollateralization as credit enhancement has long...

U.S. RMBS issuance drops, jumbling league table standings.
April 9, 2007... Hit by rising interest rates, slowing home price appreciation and tightening underwriting standards, U.S. RMBS volume fell 5% to $248 billion in 1Q07 from $261 billion a year earlier, according to data for both agency and non-agency issuance...

Mortgages outperform on supportive conditions.
April 9, 2007... There were a couple of themes running through last week's market. These were a pick up in bid list activity related to early adopters of FAS 159 and an alignment of various MBS factors that inspired a supportive tone for mortgages. The...

LatAm's skimpy numbers mask other developments.
April 9, 2007... Last quarter, Latin America took only two securitizations abroad. Brazil's and Mexico's domestic markets, meanwhile, cemented their reputations as the region's true magnets of activity. But let's give the cross-border its due. Foreign...

Keeping up with Basel II: The use of CRE CDOs by regulated banks.
April 9, 2007... by: Charles G. Roberts and Angus Duncan, partners in the capital markets department at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP. With the introduction of Basel II, many banks are concerned about the increase in capital charges for commercial...

Still more good times ahead for European RMBS.
April 9, 2007... European securitization closed a record first quarter with RMBS volumes still playing a lead role. If there's to be any U.S. subprime contagion, investor and issuer appetite have yet to show it. Even with some of the weaker continental...

Global ABS gathering says adios to Barcelona and bon jour to France.
April 9, 2007... The European Securitization Forum (ESF) and Information Management Network (IMN) - which, for the first time, will join forces to co-host the Global ABS conference this year -are already looking for a new venue to host this yearly gathering....

La Hipotecaria closes as Descap keeps eye on LatAm.(Brief article)
April 9, 2007... More details have emerged on a recent RMBS from Panama's La Hipotecaria, the second cross-border mortgage deal from Latin America this year. The $73 million, six-year average life bond priced at 5.75% and holds triple-A ratings from all three...

Citigroup's Sheldon departs student loan group, preceding word of 17,000 layoffs.
April 16, 2007... A prominent figure in student loan securitization, Paul B. Sheldon, left Citigroup Global Markets just over a week ago, sources confirmed last week. His departure came several days before the investment bank announced a massive cost-cutting...

TCW leads CDO manager list.
April 16, 2007... Some of the largest U.S. CDO managers in 2006 counted ABS CDOs as nearly their entire book of business, according to Standard & Poor's. ABS CDO transactions accounted for more than two-thirds of outstanding issuance for 17 of the top 25...

Mizuho preps U.S. CDO pipeline.
April 16, 2007... Mizuho Securities USA has several ABS CDOs and CLOs in its pipeline, according to the head of U.S. structured credit, Alexander Rekeda. The Japanese bank began underwriting CDOs in the U.S. market this year, after Rekeda and 10 members of...

Whispers.
April 16, 2007... The UBS student loan ABS group is settling into some major changes. Paul Wozniak, managing director and longtime manager of its education loan group, recently passed leadership of the team to Amy Monblatt, a managing director who has been with...

Wheat from the Chaff: Student lender cleanup not likely to stymie SLABS.
April 16, 2007... Last week, the New York Attorney General's office reminded Sallie Mae and Student Loan Express that they had no right to involve universities in underhanded tactics to generate business. The University of Pennsylvania also acknowledged that it...

Asset-Backeds: ECC sues Bear Stearns unit.
April 16, 2007... ECC Capital Corp. said last week that one of its units is suing a subsidiary of Bear Stearns, seeking more than $20 million for an alleged breach of contract over the sale of a residential mortgage loan portfolio. "Based on our preliminary...

Alphabet Soup: Are HELs the new high ground?An interesting twist in the subprime saga.(home equity loans )
April 16, 2007... While some CDO issuers have packed up and left the home equity loan space amid worsening credit performance, others say they plan to stay put. Perhaps the difference between the two camps depends on where, exactly, in the HEL space they've been...

Asset-Backeds: Santander in new league of borrowing with latest transaction.
April 16, 2007... Specialty auto finance company Santander Consumer USA's buyout by Banco Santander Centro Hispano last December complemented its ongoing efforts to expand product offerings to dealers and compete more effectively with other lenders. The latter...

Columbus Nova snags Trimaran team.
April 16, 2007... New York City-based Columbus Nova formed a Special Opportunities Fund to invest in middle-market companies through all levels of their capital structures, and the firm recruited a team from Trimaran Capital Partners to manage the effort. ...

Asset-Backeds: One-in-five HEL borrowers could.(home equity loans)(qualification for Federal Housing Administration mortgage )(Brief article)
April 16, 2007... get an FHA loan, Barclays says Roughly 20% of borrowers holding subprime mortgages originated in 2005 would be able to qualify for a Federal Housing Administration mortgage under current standards, Barclays Capital analysts said during an...

Mortgage-Backeds: Relatively quiet mortgage flows.
April 16, 2007... despite higher yields and flatter curve The markets were rather quiet last week, althought participants flooded back from the long weekend to higher rates and a flatter curve. The flatter curve was a reaction to the...

Low Down at High Tea: Creeping interest rates not enough to change the tide of lending.
April 16, 2007... The Bank of England left U.K. interest rates unchanged before Easter, perhaps to give the hard-driving mortgage market a brief respite for the religious holiday. But we all know that just as fluffy bunnies and hollow milk chocolate eggs do...

International: Green technology gets a capital market boost in Europe.
April 16, 2007... With the world turning its attention to renewable energy sources, it's no wonder that capital market investors are keen to get in on the action. For some, the motivation has been the better yields that come with an untested product, while for...

International: After the Easter lull, steady pipeline begins to build.
April 16, 2007... The Easter break may have tamed the flood overtaking European primary issuance, but it was only a brief rest. Very little began actively marketing last week but based on announcements of what's in store for the rest of April, the market looks...

International: Greek deals begin to feel prepayment squeeze.
April 16, 2007... Greece's mortgage market is experiencing an uptick in volume. Favorable interest rates have led to more refinancing among borrowers, and lenders are continuing to experiment with new mortgage products to attract first time borrowers. However,...

International: Argentina climbs higher but still in catch-up mode.
April 16, 2007... Securitization in Argentina has been the little engine that could since it sputtered out of the crisis sparked by the central government's default of December 2001. To be sure, the sector remains miles behind the regional locomotive it once...

1st Quarter 2007 New Issues Guide Real estate issuance stays on top, while autos decline in 1Q07.
April 23, 2007... Continuing the theme from the fourth quarter of last year, the real estate sector dominated securitization activity in 1Q06 despite the negative headlines involving subprime mortgages. In a quarter marked by bankruptcy filings of large...

Whispers.
April 23, 2007... Joseph Lizzio, former co-head of agency trading and sales at Citigroup Global Markets, left the bank last week, sources confirmed. The bank declined to comment by press time. Timothy Nabors joined Six Degrees Capital Management, a...

Sallie Mae buyout plan raises questions about destiny of servicing.
April 23, 2007... Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and two private equity firms bagged big game when they agreed to buy out Sallie Mae Corp. last week for $25 billion. As the four stake-holding companies now divvy up the spoils of the company, which managed $142...

Fitch, DBRS criticize CPDOs.(dominion bond rating service)(constant proportion debt obligation)
April 23, 2007... Derivative Fitch last week said the string of so-called "first generation" CPDOs that have come to the market over the last nine months would not warrant a triple-A or even double-A rating using its own methodology. Both Fitch and its...

Morrill latest in HSBC departures.(Caroline Morrill resigned from HSBC Americas Inc.)
April 23, 2007... Several key structured finance executives at HSBC have either resigned or transferred out of its New York office recently, in what some market observers say is the bank's effort to pull back from the subprime mortgage market after losses in...

Demand high for burgeoning U.S. covered bond market.
April 23, 2007... New York's financial markets are looking east for inspiration, and they've found it in the covered bond market. Investors like this product because it represents a way to invest in triple-A-rated or close to risk-free assets at attractive...

Industry participants fear ham-fisted HEL modification mandates.(home equity loans)
April 23, 2007... Regulators and politicians seemed intent last week for HEL investors to share in the pain of subprime borrowers who are unable - or may soon be unable - to make their monthly mortgage payments. Although GSEs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,...

Fortress may buy Fremont Investment's subprime operations.
April 23, 2007... Hedge fund Fortress Investment Group is planning to buy Fremont Investment & Loan's subprime operations, according to sources close to the deal. The acquisition, which is awaiting due diligence and a final agreement, would be the second such...

Churchill Financial taps into mezzanine lending.
April 23, 2007... New York-based commercial finance and asset management company Churchill Financial completed its acquisition of Churchill Capital's Mezzanine Finance Business last week. Though the merger, which will solidify two business platforms that have...

Carlyle/Babson close CLO funds.
April 23, 2007... Washington D.C.-based private equity firm The Carlyle Group announced the close of its tenth U.S. loan fund, Carlyle High Yield Partners X, Ltd, a $400 million CLO. Carlyle's U.S. leveraged finance group has closed three CLOs with a total of...

Fitch: Synthetic CDOs to feel full impact of HELs in 2H07.
April 23, 2007... Fitch Ratings last week said it expected to downgrade roughly 27% of the tranches of synthetic CDOs referencing U.S. subprime securities by an average 2.4 notches, given a recent stress test applied to the deals it's rated. The rating agency...

GSEs announce subprime buying initiatives.
April 23, 2007... Last week both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac announced stepped-up efforts to aid subprime borrowers who need to refinance into more affordable mortgages, as their representatives testified before Congress. Market participants expected that the...

Lackluster flows continue in MBS.
April 23, 2007... Mortgages generally were treading water last week. Volume was mostly below normal, though flows were generally balanced overall with the up-in-coupon trade more favored. According to Lehman Brothers, from the month to date through April 18, the...

Mortgage supply still does not exceed demand.
April 23, 2007... Rising MBS supply has been worrisome for the market, especially in light of the uncertain demand for the product. However, experts still believe that there is sufficient demand for the supply to be absorbed. In a recent report, JPMorgan...

Defects in lenders' operational processes cause MBS risks.
April 23, 2007... by: Rebecca B. Walzak, president and CEO of Walzak Risk Analysis Concerned that increasing mortgage defaults will harm securities backed by those loans, investors have been increasingly demanding that lenders repurchase massive amounts of...

Local currency bonds: infatuation or something more?
April 23, 2007... Last week, the pound sterling soared to a 26-year high against the dollar and the euro hit its own two-year peak. You can imagine retail investors across the U.S. were anxiously wondering whether they'd put enough of their savings in assets...

Euro auto ABS continues growth drive through 2007.
April 23, 2007... The European auto securitization market is revving up, with this year's deals set to nearly double the output from 2006. The market is bristling with so much activity, sources say, that business is crossing beyond the continental European...

Listed investment funds dwindle from subprime debacle.(Brief article)
April 23, 2007... Many funds listed on the London Stock Exchange faced losses in the wake of the U.S. subprime situation, but none seemingly more so than Caliber Global and Queen's Walk Investments. The two Guernsey-based companies were heavy investors in...

Will U.K. non-conforming market follow in U.S. subprime footsteps?
April 23, 2007... As negative headlines splash across financial journals, with threats of litigation in the U.S. subprime market, sources in U.K. RMBS wonder if this shakedown will ripple across the pond to the non-conforming market. While the U.K. appears to...

OPIC, Greenwich create multiseller for Russian mortgages.
April 23, 2007... By dint of geography, London-based bankers are naturally dominating the Russian RMBS game, but not all players on this side of the pond are content to watch. Connecticut-based Greenwich Financial Services, which has one Russian RMBS under its...

Whispers.
April 30, 2007... Jones Day has announced additions to its structured finance practice, part of the firm's banking and finance group. The law firm added John White, who was formerly at Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft, as "of counsel" for its CDO team. White, who is...

LaSalle's CMBS abilities eyed in Bank of America takeover.
April 30, 2007... It is good to be king - of the Chicago banking market that is. After agreeing to a $21 billion cash buyout by Bank of America Corp., LaSalle Bank Corp.'s parent company reportedly received a substantial competing bid of $98.1 billion from a...

CFXOs make a bet on currency risk.
April 30, 2007... Market participants are working toward packaging currency volatility risk into CDO structures, according to rating agency sources. The deals under consideration, called CFXOs, would initially issue between $50 million and $100 million in...

Spring ABS deals with subprime.
April 30, 2007... More than 1,000 attendees are expected to gather this week at Information Management Network's Spring ABS 2007 conference held in Miami Beach, Fla. Aside from the emphasis on global emerging markets, which is new to this type of conference,...

Government intervention in reinsurance no poison pill.
April 30, 2007... Anyone who thinks that the world of insurance-linked securities is too indigestible and dull to generate excitement got a rude awakening last week, when sparks of contention flew between advocates and opponents of the government's role as a...

When it comes to shorts, is CMBS the new HEL?
April 30, 2007... Leading up to the release of the CMBX 07-1 index last week, concern was mounting regarding the credit quality of recently issued commercial mortgages. Seen by many as the most aggressive of the rating agencies on the topic, Moody's Investors...

Spreads widen across CMBS conduits.
April 30, 2007... CMBS spreads were wider as guidance was released on the two deals that were in the market last week and that were slated to price by month end. The Lehman Brothers-UBS deal launched and priced last Tuesday. Triple-B and triple-B-minus...

Ginnie Mae securities fall out of favor.
April 30, 2007... As a result of deteriorating credit, slower home price appreciation and subprime spill-over, Ginnie Mae securities are falling out of favor with Street analysts. On the credit side, Federal Housing Administration (FHA) delinquencies have...

EU committee presents hard-line stance on government-related securitization.
April 30, 2007... At the request of the European Union statistical body, Eurostat, the European Committee on Monetary, Financial and Balance of Payments (CMFB) has recommended that the securitization of fiscal claims by governments be treated as direct,...

Will diminishing equity returns impact Euro CLOs?
April 30, 2007... While not an immediate concern, the diminishing returns on CLO equity are not going unnoticed in Europe. For some leveraged loan bankers, they're a barometer for the future health and performance of the leveraged loan marketplace. As the...

Citi launches ruble deal for Russia's Fannie Mae.
April 30, 2007... An anticipated debut RMBS from Russia's Fannie Mae crossed a threshold last week, garnering a rating from Moody's Investors Service. Citigroup Global Markets is leading the ruble-denominated transaction, which was in the marketing phase last...

Primary trickle aids secondary trading.
April 30, 2007... April continued its quiet tone last week with little pricing on the primary front. Deal pricings have, thus far, totaled 11 billion ($15 billion) this month, but the deal schedule is looking optimistic, and it is likely that the pace will pick...