Finance

Further restrictions on new bank funding mean that the majority of European CMBS loans are still failing to repay at maturity, according to a Fitch Ratings report.

Massachusetts on Thursday sued the nation's five largest residential servicers, alleging their foreclosure practices were unlawful and deceptive.

Standard & Poor's has assigned preliminary credit ratings to the series 2011-1 class A and B notes and the series 2011-2 class A notes issued under the principal-at-risk variable-rate note program Atlas VI Capital Ltd.

JG Wentworth is in the market with a $198 million structured settlement securitization.

CMBS data provider Trepp just released its November 2011 U.S. CMBS Delinquency Report today.

For the week ending Dec. 1, mortgage rates were little changed as reported by Freddie Mac's weekly survey.

Freddie Mac announced it has ordered all evictions involving foreclosed occupied single family and 2 to 4 unit properties that had Freddie Mac mortgages to be suspended from December 19, 2011 to January 2, 2012.

Early outlooks for 2012 suggested net organic supply at around $10 billion with an added volume of more than $78 billion coming from paydowns/sales from the GSE and U.S. Treasury portfolios.

The auto ABS market survived the financial crisis relatively unscathed.

Bloomberg recently reported that a number of dealers expect the Fed to initiate a new round of MBS purchases, with the goal of pushing mortgage rates lower and giving a boost to the still-sickly housing market. The idea of more MBS purchases raises a host of critical issues, particularly with respect to an exit strategy. (An investor who holds more than $1 trillion of an asset class effectively becomes the market.) Nonetheless, I believe that a well-conceived program can positively impact mortgage rates and housing.

With the macroeconomic uncertainty and headline risk still driving the securitization markets as 2012 comes to an end, it is no wonder that investors are looking for assurance before they sail through the uncharted waters of structured investments.

As the European sovereign crisis and uncertainty in the U.S. housing market play havoc with the prices of securitizable assets, appraising risk seems as easy for investors as threading a needle while riding a rollercoaster.

Four months after downgrading U.S. Treasury bonds, Standard & Poor's has lowered or affirmed fewer than half of the highest-rated ABS guaranteed by the now-defunct Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP).

U.K. banks looking to offload large portfolios of commercial real estate (CRE) loans are offering buyers financing options to make sales more attractive.

To achieve a recovery in both the housing sector and the overall economy, mortgage banks need insight into the misconceptions on how mortgage delinquency and economic stress have impacted borrower behavior. This includes insight into what a "strategic default" is.

Credit ratings have historically played a relatively small role in the European leveraged loan market, which through the 1990s was comprised of privately held companies borrowing almost exclusively from banks.

U.S. dollar funding is gaining traction among U.K. issuers of RMBS and credit card ABS.

Russian middle-tier bank Vozrozhdenie is in the local market with a ruble-denominated RMBS, the first time the issuer has tapped this market. Rated 'Ba3' by Moody's Investors Service, the bank itself is not controlled by the government, making it an anomaly in the current environment.

Fannie Mae acquired $58.4 billion of mortgages from its seller/servicers in October, its best purchase month since January and a sign that low rates are starting to spur new activity in the primary market.

Standard & Poor's changed some of its ratings for National Public Finance Guarantee Corp. (NPFG), the municipal bond insuring subsidiary of MBIA.