Bank of America Merrill Lynch has named new coheads of its global leveraged finance group, according to an internal memo.

Goldman Sachs can complete the sale of its mortgage servicing subsidiary to Ocwen Financial Corp. now that the parties have agreed to a settlement with the New York superintendent of banks over alleged abusive services practices, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

Major League Baseball's (MLB) Club Trust Securitization has been rated 'A-' by Fitch Ratings.

With the private-label mortgage market virtually nonexistent and the GSEs in trouble, Ginnie Mae has come to the forefront to fill the void that these other sources of credit have left.

Volatility in the capital markets has pushed industry participants towards safe-haven assets such as covered bonds.

The recent focus on the economy and the jobless rate has, in the popular press, pushed the housing market from the front pages of the mainstream press. The continued weakness in the housing markets, however, is a major factor in the sapping of consumer confidence and the resulting lack of a robust rebound. While housing and mortgage lending remains entangled in a seemingly intractable web of investigations, negotiations and unimplemented regulations, an important short-term goal should be to make headway against the huge backlog of nonperforming loans.

Having proven their mettle in crisis conditions, covered bonds are gaining popularity outside their traditional enclave of continental Europe. A number of emerging markets are looking into the product, and a few have recently made concrete moves. Turkey, for instance, saw its first covered bond a couple of months ago.

The Standard & Poor's downgrade of the U.S. long-term debt rating was followed a few days later by downgrades of debt issued by government-related entities such as the Federal Home Loan Banks and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), as well as a slew of funds with a majority of their exposures to U.S. Treasurys.

It's been a brutal time for executives in structured finance departments across Wall Street since the 2008 financial crisis.

Once again the fear in the MBS market is the possibility of a government refinancing program —dubbed refinance.gov or refi.gov by analysts — as a way to stimulate the economy.

The current shutdown of the European leveraged loan market, after a glimpse of better times earlier this year, has prompted some to fret, once again, about a barrage of loan maturities coming due just as many of Europe's CLOs come to the end of their reinvestment period.

As part of its ongoing efforts to better align the interests of participants in the RMBS market and address the issue of risk retention, the Asset Securitization Forum (ASF) has come out with some guidelines relating to the repurchase of RMBS.