Finance

In a report released today, Barclays Capital analysts said that they remain positive on credit

Nevada's attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto filed civil fraud charges against Lender Processing Services and two subsidiaries alleging the company engaged in a widespread fraud of forging foreclosure documents.

The Houston-based law firm Gibbs & Burns, which was behind the Bank of America $8.5 billion MBS settlement, said today that it is representing investors looking to settle a claim against JPMorgan.

The week in mortgages was described as "slow", "light", "exhausted", and "apathetic". This statement is supported by Tradeweb's volume which averaged 87% for the week through Thursday, down further from even last week's limited 93%.

Fannie Mae's latest multifamily DUS REMIC priced under its guaranteed multifamily structures program included some exceptionally large orders and saw high demand for a yearend auction.

Apollo Global Management said today it agreed to acquire Stone Tower Capital, an investment firm that manages 12 CLOs, for an undisclosed sum.

Redwood Trust said it is currently seeing a very robust pipeline of potential CMBS transactions.

The Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday sued Richard Syron, the former chief executive officer of Freddie Mac, and Daniel Mudd, ex-CEO of Fannie Mae, over disclosures they made about subprime assets the GSEs invested in.

With Congress moving closer to raising the guarantee fee on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans, a proposal to hike Ginnie Mae fees by an equal amount is being circulated on Capitol Hill, National Mortgage News has learned.

Fannie Mae is giving the mortgage servicing industry's handling of troubled government-backed loans a makeover. But it would rather do so in private.

Congressional Republicans have long been calling for the federal government to reduce its involvement in the U.S. housing market.

KeyBanc Capital Markets has hired Steve Rielly from UBS to oversee loan trading, ASR sister publication Leveraged Finance News has confirmed.

Mortgage rates declined in the week ending Dec. 15, according to Freddie Mac's weekly survey. 30-year rates fell five basis points to 3.94% with an average 0.8 point, matching its all time low set in the week ending Oct. 6.

The credit performance of private student loan ABS will stay weak in 2012 given the current different macroeconomic factors, Moody's Investor's Service stated in a report released today.

A House Financial Services subcommittee has approved a bill that would establish a foundation for a new private-label securitization market for mortgages.

Foreclosure filings involving default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions were down 3% in November across the country from the previous month, according to RealtyTrac's latest foreclosure report.

DDR Corp. has appointed Luke Petherbridge senior vice president of capital markets.

Neil Barofsky, the former special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), this week hammered the Obama Administration and Treasury Department at a panel discussion on the foreclosure crisis, saying fears of a political backlash led to the administration's tepid response to the housing crisis and refusal to back principal reductions.

In a report released this morning, Standard & Poor's analysts said covered bond issuance in 2012 should benefit from a bias for secured funding.