Asset Securitization Report articles from November 2007

Asset Securitization Report archives from November 2007

Whispers.
November 5, 2007... Two senior executives have joined Societe Generale's debt capital markets (DCM) team in Europe. Ralf Grossmann joins as head of covered bonds for Europe, a new role, and Christian Rose joins the bank as director of DCM, Nordic origination,...

Market Pauses Ahead of ABS East: Signs of strain seen on consumer end of credit card, possibly auto classes.
November 5, 2007... In recent months, the securitization market had come to rely on the consumer ABS asset classes to sustain production, while the subprime MBS and CDO markets retreated. Last week, however, that small group itself-comprised of credit card, auto...

Fitch Aims to Increase CRE CDO Transparency: Requests for extra loan-level information intended to increase CRE CDO market liquidity.
November 5, 2007... As rating agencies boost their CRE-surveillance criteria to defend against opacity, the Commercial Real Estate CDO market appears to be learning from transparency troubles in the ABS CDO space. Recently, Derivative Fitch released a report...

DTCC Scrutiny Could Raise Fees.
November 5, 2007... The complexity of asset-backed securities (ABS) and collateralized-mortgage obligations (CMOs) has played a major role in Wall Street's current difficulties valuing the assets, and it has also created processing complexities resulting in...

CMBX Launches With Wider Spreads.(Commercial Mortgage Backed Securities Index)
November 5, 2007... After the recent launch of CMBX. NA.4, spreads on initial trading are wide, market participants noted last week, explaining that the lastest series references riskier commerical mortgage bonds than its predecessors. "While it may take a...

A Golden Age for Mortgage Insurers? Despite considerable losses, mortgage insurers may benefit from continued troubles in the U.S. subprime market.
November 5, 2007... MGIC Investment has been the victim of negative headlines since writing down its joint venture, mortgage securitization and servicing company C-Bass. The company followed it up by calling off a potential merger with fellow mortgage insurer...

Skepticism Meets Reform Bill.
November 5, 2007... A federal bill that cracks down on predatory lending and enforces new liabilities on investors that securitize home loans, has been met with mixed reaction from industry insiders. "The Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act of...

MBS: Tracking the Storm.
November 5, 2007... The meltdown of the subprime mortgage market has been in the eye of the storm this year. Given the deterioration in mortgage-loan underwriting practices, numerous institutions predicted notably those mortgages originated in late 2005 and in...

Things Are Holding Up Down in the District.(holding up securitization in Mexico conference)
November 5, 2007... Last week IMN held its second Securitization in Mexico conference in the country's capital, the Federal District. About 320 people showed up, the same as last year. While conference fatigue and whirligig markets have chipped away at attendance...

Market Prices First Deal Post Crisis: Euro Market Shows Signs of Life With E-MAC NL, secured by Dutch RMBS.
November 5, 2007... European issuers priced the first publicly syndicated securitization since the market virtually came to a standstill last summer. But despite some encouraging signs of interest from the buyside, some say, the relatively small-size issue won't...

Euro LSS CDOs Weather Storm.
November 5, 2007... While much of the structured finance market in Europe was badly affected by contagion from the subprime problem in the U.S. and the ensuing liquidity crunch, leveraged super senior (LSS) CDOs - a little-known facet of the European...

European Securities Market Directive Takes Effect.
November 5, 2007... The new Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) came into effect last week and market participants expect countries such as Poland, Portugal and Spain, which have yet to fully adopt the reforms, to feel the greatest impact. ...

Real Estate Roundtable: Today, Yesterday and Tomorrow.(Discussion)
November 5, 2007... As the securitization industry tries to make sense of life after the credit market meltdown, we at Asset Securitization Report thought it would be a good time to sit down with some of the top players in the RMBS and CMBS market and hear their...

Whispers.
November 12, 2007... AIM Trimark Investments has launched the INVESCO Global Real Estate Fund. The new fund will make global investments primarily in real estate securities and real estate-related companies such as REITs. The fund focuses on total return through a...

Slight Activity from Sleepy ABS Market: Reliable cards, autos take breather as esoteric transactions take up more room in ABS queue.
November 12, 2007... Several CMBS, student loan ABS and esoteric deals have hit the market since Nov.1, and issuance totaled more than $11 billion. Still, market sources suggest that the asset securitization industry has a long way to go before real recovery begins...

CLC Planning First Private SLABS.
November 12, 2007... Times are changing quickly for the student loan ABS sector, both externally and internally. While the asset class continues to attract attention from investor groups that are shying away from MBS products, lenders and secondary market financing...

Wendy's in Bank Strategy?
November 12, 2007... The market material adverse change clause, or "market MAC," gives banks the ability to walk away from their obligation to syndicate or hold debt if further deterioration of the credit markets takes place. Market observers have seen a return of...

Concerns Voiced on U.K., Irish Housing.
November 12, 2007... Mid-sized lending agencies in the British Isles may face some near-term difficulties, but should make it through those problems intact, according to Fitch Ratings. However, both Fitch Ratings and Standard & Poor's set a cautious tone about the...

Rating Agencies Remain Targets of Blame.
November 12, 2007... Plenty of criticism has already been lobbed at the rating agencies, and panelists at IMN's ABS East conference in Orlando certainly did not spare them any fault. They were the grease that made this happen," said Vincent Daniel, executive...

Corporate Defaults May Cause Bumps For CLOs.
November 12, 2007... When compared to the ABS CDO market, the CLO market has remained relatively intact, despite the liquidity dry-up in the corporate credit market this past summer and heightened concern about subprime RMBS contagion. But while new issuance...

Industry Leaders Call for Change.(Asset backed securities industry)
November 12, 2007... Amid anxieties over what lies ahead, conference delegates got some strongly worded advice last week on how to promote the ABS industrys recovery: bite the bullet, take losses and structure future deals with larger equity components. If the...

Higher Volume, Wider Swaps Mark MBS: Departure of Citigroup's Prince, and investigations of Freddie, Fannie highlight news.
November 12, 2007... There were modest rebounds early last week after the previous week's flight-to-quality rally on subprime write-down fears. The highlight on the subprime topic through midweek last week was the departure of Citigroup Chairman and CEO Charles...

Kazakhstan may give monolines fresh trouble.
November 12, 2007... As if the monoline insurers don't have enough on their minds, they're now facing downgrade reviews from Moody's Investors Service on a slew of structured notes originated by top-tier Kazakh banks Bank TuranAlem (BTA) and Kazkommertsbank (KKB)....

Monolines Absorb Europe Woes: Could insurers withstand an astronomical hit?
November 12, 2007... As the turmoil intensifies in the European asset-backed market, it's beginning to look as if not even the titans of the monolines are immune to subprime aftershock. The monoline industry, which recently saw some of its major players reporting...

Whispers.
November 19, 2007... According to news reports, Barclays Bank's co-president, Jerry del Missier, has busted the rank of two executives: John Kreitler, U.S. head of credit trading, and Vince Balducci, U.S. head of credit derivatives. The two will remain with the...

ABS Productivity Yields Pair of Auto Transactions: Citigroup offers two auto ABS deals, and Banc of America is back with another MBS transaction.
November 19, 2007... Walled in between the widespread perception of contagion in the financial markets and a long list of announcements of writedowns and layoffs, securitization industry professionals found themselves confronting another quiet week of productivity....

Markit Takes Global Control with Index Acquisition.(International Index Co. )
November 19, 2007... Aiming to create what it calls "a single family of global indices," Markit has acquired International Index Co. and agreed to acquire CDS IndexCo, in what will be the biggest and most important acquisition the company has made to date,...

ABS/MBS Litigation Outlook.
November 19, 2007... The coming months will likely bring an unprecedented amount of new litigation concerning asset-backed securities (ABS) and mortgage-backed securities (MBS) issued over the past two years. Disappointed investors are likely to pursue remedies on...

Will ABS Reorgs Mitigate Losses?
November 19, 2007... In what seems like an endless stream of write-downs on subprime RMBS and ABS CDO holdings, banks have had to revaluate their positions in the structured finance market, which lately means personnel reorganizations. But not all market...

Jumbo Limits For GSEs A Good Idea? Fed suggests raising Fannie and Freddie conforming limit in loss-mitigation efforts.(government sponsored enterprises)
November 19, 2007... Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have built their businesses around providing housing opportunities for the common' American. But amid pressure from mounting mortgage resets, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has floated the idea of raising...

WaMu Under Appraisal Fraud Probe.
November 19, 2007... An investigation by the New York attorney general into Washington Mutual's role in a case of alleged real estate appraisal fraud could have broader implications for the mortgage industry. As part of his investigation, New York Attorney...

Liquidity Crisis Draining CMBS Pools of Loan Diversity.
November 19, 2007... The lack of liquidity in the structured finance market is beginning to hinder the ability of CMBS issuers to originate loans at the same clip they were doing in the first half of the year. With a much slower pace of origination, the deals...

MBS Buying on Break in Subprime Tape Backfires.
November 19, 2007... The first half of last week saw a reprieve from the subprime tape bombs. In fact there was some encouraging news with Goldman Sachs saying it didn't expect to report significant write-downs, while Bear Stearns reported it would take a much less...

Issuance Issues in EM Europe, not LatAm.(Latin American)
November 19, 2007... While the subprime bullet has only nicked domestic issuance in Latin American structured finance, and there's plenty of liquidity among local investors to shrug off the crunch abroad, the cross-border front has been struggling to hop back on...

Could TRACE Bring ABS Pricing into Focus?
November 19, 2007... When Citigroup announced on Nov. 4 that it anticipated the fair value of approximately $55 billion in subprime exposures would decline somewhere between $8 billion and $11 billion, the imprecise estimate highlighted a problem faced by...

Prepayments Soar in Italian Mortgage Market: Bersani Decree increases prepayment volume; Euro ABS gets a boost.
November 19, 2007... The Italian Bersani Decree, which eliminates prepayment penalties on certain mortgages, has set off the highest rate of prepayments since 2000, according to Standard & Poor's. The bump is providing some lift to investors in an otherwise...

European ABS Market Continues to Grapple with Inconsistency.
November 19, 2007... The asset-backed securities market in Europe is still on a roller coaster ride. Last week, Moody's Investors Service announced that it may downgrade a series of SIVs that include some senior sponsors, while Standard & Poor's upgraded 13...

Lewtan Rolls Assistant'.(Lewtan Technologies)(Brief article)
November 19, 2007... Lewtan Technologies, a company that provides data and workflow services to the ABS industry, unveiled its latest analytics tool for the global securitization industry last Friday. The structuring assistant is software for those who wish to run...

Whispers.
November 26, 2007... Private-equity firm J.C. Flowers has reportedly submitted a bid for Northern Rock that offers a "nominal" value to shareholders, while repaying GBP15 billion of Bank of England debt. J.C. Flowers would make additional repayments of around GBP10...

Holiday Cheers, and Sadly, Jeers.(asset backed securities industry has reasons to chear)
November 26, 2007... It is a reasonable assumption that during Thanksgiving dinner, thousands in the ABS business returned to the tradition of going around the feast table and counting their blessings. True enough, the ABS industry had at least some reason for...

Moody's DCV Aims For Fair Value.
November 26, 2007... Price dislocation in the CDO market has not only halted new issuance but has made the value of existing CDO securities almost impossible to assess. In an effort to address these valuation issues, Moody's Investors Service's Wall Street...

Alternative Funding Could Sustain Critical Monoline Ratings.
November 26, 2007... Doubt over the monolines' triple-A-rating stability has been the subject of negative headlines since last summer. While a downgrade would have a dire effect on a guarantor's business model, particularly in the municipal bond market, which is...

Spotlight on CDS Risks in Play.
November 26, 2007... Perhaps the most surprising element of the escalating concern about mispriced and hidden risk in financial markets is the lack of focus on derivatives - so far. But the pervasive crisis of confidence in financial markets, which is being...

Proposed REMIC Regs Aim For Flexibility.(Real Estate Mortgage Investment Conduit)
November 26, 2007... The Internal Revenue Service's proposed changes to commercial real estate mortgage investment conduits will offer more flexibility for borrowers looking to modify their loans and bring the regulations up to date with today's market, according...

Senior SIVs Next in Firing Line: Possible downgrades for SIVs push spreads out to extreme wides; shrinking ABCP also a contributor.
November 26, 2007... The SIV unease continues to unfold with more drama. Moody's Investor Service announced recently that 16 SIVs, holding approximately $30.3 billion of debt securities, have been placed on review and face possible downgrade. Among the carnage are...

Investors Run as Northern Rock Shares Continue to Fall.
November 26, 2007... The one-time giant among U.K. mortgage lenders, Northern Rock, which holds a fifth of all residential mortgages, continues to find itself hobbled. Despite continued assistance from the Bank of England and impending takeover bids, the fate of...

Caution on Europe EM Urged.(emerging markets)
November 26, 2007... Fitch Ratings' second annual Emerging Markets conference, held recently in London, started off positively enough. While presenting slide after slide of optimistic news for investors looking for potential opportunities in the sector, the rating...

Consumer Debt Mania in Mexico and Brazil: What Does It Mean for ABS?
November 26, 2007... Once exclusively available to the well-to-do, credit has been descending the socio-economic ladder in Mexico and Brazil during the past few years. Easing interest rates and healthy growth, among other factors, are inducting more low-to-middle...