CMBS

November was the fourth consecutive month of CMBS delinquency decreases, but office properties are still a concern heading into the next year, according to the latest delinquency index results from Fitch Ratings.

Federal regulators took another step Wednesday toward lessening banks' reliance on credit ratings by proposing three methods for assessing risk on firms' trading books.

U.S. structured finance is expected to be stable from a credit and ratings standpoint, although macro uncertainties can test collateral performance for some asset classes, Fitch Ratings said in its 2012 outlook report.

European ABS issuance sold to investors should at most grow only modestly next year, Standard & Poor's said.

Most CMBS collateral from 2001 rated by Fitch Ratings has withstood both a turn-of-the-decade recession and a recent global credit crisis.

UBS and Citigroup are planning to sell a $674 million CMBS expected to close before the year's end, according to a Bloomberg report.

Five banks across the nation failed in November, according to Trepp's latest report, with commercial real estate a major contributing factor.

Fitch Ratings said Friday that an outlook change to negative for "defeased" U.S. CMBS looks unlikely despite the use of government debt in defeasance and a recent revision of the sovereign outlook to negative.

Craig Sedmak, head of CMBS trading at the Royal Bank of Scotland, has left the bank to pursue interests outside of financial services, according to people familiar with the situation.

New data released from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority's (FINRA) Trade Reporting and Compliance Engine (TRACE) showed that the average weekly CMBS trading volume has been decreasing since June.