Student loan player First Marblehead Corporation has been accumulating assets over the past two years as collateral for a potential return to the ABS market, said Gary Santo, a managing director at the firm, on the sidelines of ABS East.

Despite being the ABS market's current darling, a speaker at ABS East saw a potential bubble forming in the subprime auto segment.

Speakers harped on two topics in particular: the qualified residential mortgage rule and what they see as the unfair advantage that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac still enjoy over the private-label RMBS market.

The fiscal cliff being faced by our government at the end of the year is probably the most chilling macro-economic risk, ABS East panelists said.

While the recovery of the housing market is on firm footing, house prices in aggregate are unlikely to rise quickly, participants say.

European securitizations are likely to face more stringent capital requirements as the Basel Committee examines how these transactions are regulated.

Finacity Corporation structured a $150 million securitization for the Manitowoc Company.

Fannie Mae president and CEO Timothy Mayopoulos said the GSE recognizes the outsized role it is playing in the mortgage market but is working on trying to attract more private capital to the business, he told attendees at the Mortgage Bankers Association’s annual convention in Chicago today.

Lender Processing Services said today it has added two supplemental data modules to enhance McDash, its loan-level database.

Citi is underwriting a $67.4 mln structured finance deal for the state of Delaware that is backed by energy efficiency revenue bonds, according to an official statement published on the deal.

coverage of IMN's ABS East 2012 Conference

Fitch Ratings said today that it consolidated its investor-focused business staff in its FitchRatings unit into a global team that will be led by Debbie Hartley.