The group of state attorneys general lead by Iowa's Tom Miller have offered the banking industry new settlement terms in their negotiations around the robosigning controversy, according to a Financial Times report.

MBS issuers have long enjoyed an exemption from onerous provisions of the Investment Company Act (ICA) since the start of mortgage securitization in the early 1980s, but all that could change under a new proposal being weighed by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Mortgage application declined 4.9% in the week ending Sept. 2 in response to lower refinancing activity.

KGS-Alpha Capital Markets hired Robert Piano for the firm's new ABS team. Piano joins from Barclays Capital after nine years in the bank's asset securitization group, where he was most recently a director specializing in esoteric asset deals.

Prudential Mortgage Capital Co. appointed Scott Heath to its Atlanta office as a loan officer covering the mid-Atlantic, southeast and southwest regions.

Minnesota has selected Barclays Capital to lead a team of eight underwriting firms that will bring the state’s first ever tobacco bond sale to market this fall.

Frank Byrne was let go last week as UBS' head of structured-products underwriting and origination, 18 months after he was hired to spearhead growth in those areas, according to sources familiar with the situation.

Bank of America Corp.'s plan to eliminate roughly 3,500 jobs this quarter marks just the start of an efficiency drive that could reduce the company's global workforce by about 10%, according to a report in the Charlotte Observer.

A coalition of industry groups is urging Congress to act quickly to maintain the GSE loan limit at $729,750, saying the pending expiration is hurting both home sales and application volume.

When the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) late Friday unveiled its $200 billion lawsuit against investment banking firms that sold faulty MBS to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, it also targeted executives who signed the original shelf registration documents on the securities in question.

RBS Securities has poached Pat Beranek from Mizuho Securities to be jointly responsible for trading non-mortage ABS with Alan Johannsen, the Stamford, Connecticut-based bank said in a release. Beranek will report to Adam Siegal, co-head of U.S. ABS, MBS and CMBS Trading.

The state attorneys general have a secret weapon in their negotiations with the largest mortgage servicers: the results of a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)investigation into the banks' robo-signing practices.