Until the financial crisis brought CLO issuance to a virtual halt, CLOs were among the largest and fastest growing structured products in the marketplace, representing approximately 60% of institutional participation in syndicated loans in 2006. While the long-term impact of the Dodd-Frankrisk retention rules on CLOs remains uncertain, the short-term outlook for new CLO issuance is promising. As spreads on the triple-A rated tranches of CLOs have continued to tighten, the arbitrage on CLO collateral has become increasingly attractive in recent months. For the first time since the onset of the financial crisis, CLOs are showing signs of a sustained revival.

The U.S. Congress and U.S. regulatory agencies have imposed or proposed broad-based and aggressive laws and rulemaking in response to the failure of securitizations directly or indirectly backed by U.S. subprime residential mortgage loans originated in the several years prior to the onset of the financial crisis in 2007. Notwithstanding this aggressive response, there is no empirical evidence that transactions backed by other types of assets, including asset-backed securities (ABS) of foreign issuers, have been prone to such failures or merit coverage in the same regulatory scheme as applies to securitizations backed by subprime residential mortgage loans.

As 2011 dawned, the mortgage market was looking at the end of the Federal Reserve's second round of quantitative easing on June 30. There were also the prospects of rates creeping higher and spreads widening,

Two Harbors Investment Corp. plans to offer its first issue of private-label RMBS late this year, joining a growing number of REITs that are prepping for a reduction - likely a gradual one over the years - in government-guaranteed mortgages.

From Brussels to D.C., the season of powwows is here, and ASR's editors have certainly been getting around.

The regulatory agencies charged with implementing the risk-retention provision of the Dodd-Frank Act (DFA) recently announced that the comment period for their initial proposal will be extended to Aug. 1. As reported in the press, the delay resulted from widespread opposition to the definition of qualified residential mortgages (QRMs) as outlined in the March proposal. More fundamentally, it reflects the difficult tradeoffs involved in attempting to implement the risk retention provisions outlined in the DFA without limiting the access of large numbers of borrowers to mortgage credit and further damaging the housing market.

A common denominator in housing finance reform is the importance of the role that the private-label RMBS market must play.

Even as CMBS financing is slowly regaining form, with anticipated issuance of up to $40 billion this year, practices that contributed to the last downturn are slowly creeping back into the picture. This is a topic that was discussed at the CRE Finance Council's June convention in New York.

Brazil is one of the brighter spots in global ABS, a different world from the regulatory anxieties, debt overhang and slower origination plaguing other countries.

According to preliminary figures from the ASR Scorecards database, $31.03 billion in public ABS was issued in 1H11. This is a boost in comparison with the $26.41 billion recorded a year ago.

Regulation was a main focus at the recently concluded Global ABS 2011 conference held in Brussels in mid June. One of the issues was Solvency II, the proposed new European regulatory regime that, according to a report by Moody's Investors Service, is probably going to increase regulatory capital requirements for both European Union and European Economic Area insurers and reinsurers when it is implemented in 2013.

The regulatory overhaul of the housing market has taken center stage in most discussions regarding securitizations.