Finance

With Bank of America shedding mortgage servicing rights en masse, and a handful of other megabanks writing down their MSRs because of Basel III, prepayments and other concerns, one might think that the asset must stink to high heaven. Well, think again.

One of the takeaways from the entire mortgage meltdown and the current brouhaha over Freddie Mac's obscure hedging techniques is this: If you can't explain something, you shouldn't be doing it.

Mortgage rates reversed course after last week's pop with new record lows reported for 30- and 15-year fixed and 5/1 hybrid ARMs, according to Freddie Mac's survey.

Recoveries against bad loans have become a major source of cash for credit card issuers, and hence an increasingly important factor in the industry’s return to pre-recession loss rates.

Redwood Trust filed a shelf offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission to issue MBS that will be collateralized primarily by mortgage loans secured by first liens on one- to four-family residential properties.

Fannie Mae's issuance of MBS jumped 20% in December after a similar increase in November, according to new figures released by the mortgage giant.

CitiMortgage, the nation's sixth largest residential wholesaler, Wednesday afternoon informed its loan brokers that it will cease table funding loans next week as it prepares to exit the channel.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged four former investment bankers and traders at Credit Suisse Group for their "complex scheme to fraudulently overstate" the value of $3 billion in subprime bonds during the subprime credit crisis' height.

Third-party review firm Allonhill hired Lorie Helms as Chief Technology Officer. The new hire

Fitch Ratings has released its outlook on utility tariff securitizations. The rating agency stated that it expects strong asset performance from the sector.

Investors represented by Gibbs & Bruns have issued instructions to US Bank, Wells Fargo, and Deutsche Bank, as trustees, to open investigations to find ineligible mortgages in pools backing over $25 billion of RMBS issued by various Morgan Stanley affiliates

Legg Mason Global Asset Management has launched Permal Hedge Strategies Fund a fixed income focused multi-manager, multi-strategy fund of hedge funds.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) is preparing to back away from a controversial plan to overhaul the minimum servicing fees paid on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans, after intense, across-the-board industry opposition to the idea.

The National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) said Tuesday it disagrees with a tentative ruling by a federal judge that would dismiss its suit against RBS Securities in the failure of WesCorp Federal Credit Union.

Analytics provider Lender Processing Services (LPS) has stated that its LPS Applied Analytics division updated its home price index (LPS HPI) with residential sales concluded in November 2011.

The volume of CMBS conduit loans liquidated in January spiked sharply, jumping 51% from December's reading, according to Trepp data.

Mortgage application activity slipped 2.9% in the week ending Jan. 27 with the Refinance Index declining 3.6% to 4113.8.

To facilitate “streamline” refinancings, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) will no longer rank lenders based on the performance of those loans in its Neighborhood Watch system.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) has announced that investors interested in its Real-Estate Owned (REO) Initiative may “pre-qualify” to establish eligibility to bid on transactions in the initial pilot phase as well as subsequent phases.

As if new capital requirements penalizing risky asset-backeds weren't enough, banks may soon have to pay higher deposit insurance assessment fees relative to the riskiness of the ABS they hold on their books. This further challenges their participation in the securitization market.