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’Failing to Byzantium
Greek RMBS news that makes you go hmm (via Fitch, earlier):
Fitch Ratings-London-31 October 2011: Greek banks and RMBS transactions are at risk of losing interest payments because a Greek housing agency has delayed,
A PrimeX primer, also featuring ABX
Last week, Fitch completed a review of U.S. Prime RMBS looking at transactions involving thousands of bonds. As a result of their review, 42 per cent of the portfolio was downgraded. Since then, a tradeable index linked to a subset of prime mortgages has been falling in value and was last seeing travelling towards par.
Fannie and Freddie’s revenge — the details [updated]
– By John McDermott and Cardiff Garcia
The details of the US government’s attempted bank raid are coming in on Friday afternoon.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency has filed 17 lawsuits against banks operating in the US.
Australian RMBS grabs Moody’s attention
Moody’s is taking another look at the way it rates Australian Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities.
We anticipate increases to Moody’s Aaa mortgage default probability and house price stress rate assumptions.
Subprime selling off, again
Securitised subprime — it’s still not doing well.
While synthetic indices like the the ABX and CMBX have partially recovered from lows reached in the spring, non-agency Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities (RMBS) remain in the gutter.
Tranching up Europe’s interest rate rises
Ever pondered the big questions? The meaning of life? Are we alone in the universe? What will happen to European RMBS once interest rates start rising? We have.
And we have an answer — to the last one anyway.
ABS, CDS and various other acronyms in Australia
Your daily dose of financial innovation, right here.
Flexi ABS Trust 2011-1 may be a structured finance deal you’ve never heard of, but it’s making waves amongst securitisation types in Australia. Put simply it’s the first ever Australian deal to bundle interest-free payment plans for retail goods like jewellery,
Bank of America’s settlement
Remember those blemished Countrywide loans and the pointed letter from RMBS investors that Bank of America received last October?
The bondholders had alleged that Countrywide had failed to meet certain underwriting standards for the loans included in these RMBS deals and had improperly serviced the loans,
Back to the future with UK RMBS
Your extend and pretend datapoint du jour, right here folks.
On Monday, Moody’s released a report advocating more disclosure of loan modifications within British Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities (RMBS). The UK’s Financial Services Authority already said something similar last month,
The supply! The supply!
Maiden Lane’s no lady. She continues to harass Wall Street.
The Federal Reserve has been selling off the portfolio of dodgy Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS) it acquired as part of its bail-out of AIG.
New strategy – AIG will buy European junk instead of its own
AIG is back on Wall Street.
Fresh from failing to acquire its own portfolio of dodgy deals from the Federal Reserve — AIG’s Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS) were acquired by the US central bank during
European securitisation – now mostly retained
A milestone, of sorts, in the European structured finance market.
At the end of the first-quarter of 2011, retained securitised debt made up a bigger proportion — at 51.7 per cent — of total outstanding debt (€2,076bn) than debt placed with investors,
Premium capture is the new 436(g), Citi says
The repeal of Rule 436(g) sent the securitisation industry into a tizzy in the summer of 2010.
Now a component of last week’s proposed risk retention rules for Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS) is sparking comparisons from some analysts,
Choose your own risk retention
So now that the Federal Reserve has gifted US banks with a one-size-does-not-fit-all policy in (some) securitisation risk retentions, which version will they be going for?
After all, they’ve got horizontal and vertical (and even L-shaped) slices to choose from.
The RMBS risk retention exemption, qualified
US federal agencies on Tuesday published 233 pages of proposed rules around credit risk retention for sponsors of asset-backed securities, a requirement laid down in the Dodd-Frank legislation.
Sexy lede,
Ireland LLC
Here’s an unexpected press release from the Irish Funds Industry Association:
Irish Funds Industry Continues Expansion
TOTAL assets under administration in Ireland have reached a record high and are fast approaching the €2 trillion mark.
MERS tells members not to foreclose in its name
Fresh from Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS) on Wednesday — what looks like some (they say temporary) capitulation in the face of legal setbacks.
MERSCORP — which acts as a centralised and electronic registry for about half of the mortgages in the States — issued the below mid-week statement to its members:
What lies in Greek RMBS
Greece has lots of problems.
Yet unlike Ireland or Spain, a collapsed housing market (even under austerity) isn’t one of them. But…
This is Grifonas Finance No. 1.
Grifonas is a Greek RMBS transaction launched in 2006 (here’s the prospectus).
‘Banks may be the best holders of mortgage risk,’ says Deutsche
Or, why the private label mortgage securitisation market keeps failing to rise from the dead — especially as the US grapples with Fannie/Freddie reform.
Here’s the thinking, from Deutsche Bank’s Steven Abrahams:
The full story of the Ibanez case
Back in 2005 in Springfield, Massachusetts…
What happened next currently has the mortgage and housing market palpitating.
US Bank filed a foreclosure complaint on the above loan, but soon found itself embroiled in a legal battle which would become known as the ‘Ibanez’ case.
A court case to challenge securitisation standards [updated]
Currently winding its way through the Massachusetts Supreme Court — a little court case that could end up having big consequences for mortgage securitisations.
It’s called the ‘Ibanez case’ and here’s the story.
Open letter to a closed mortgage market
It looks as if his recent experience in the housing market has irked Nouriel Roubini (and friends).
Just making the DC Christmas post deadline Tuesday morning is a letter (H/T Politico) from the economist and a few dozen colleagues asking US regulators to develop national standards for originating,
Risk retention and RMBS
The San Francisco Fed has a new paper that tries to answer the question of whether mandatory risk retention for securitisers of RMBS is a good idea.
The short answer is ‘yes’. But for those among you who get excited by this kind of thing (we know you’re out there),
That mysterious missing mortgage note
Whoops. Securitisation snafu straight ahead.
The New York Times picked up on small court case — with big implications — over the weekend. According to testimony by a Bank of America executive, and presented as part of a New Jersey bankruptcy judge’s opinion,