Finance

Home prices, which have fallen nearly 6% over the past four quarters (ending June 30), could fall another 3.6% by 2Q11, according to analysts at Fiserv, which owns and generates the Case/Shiller house price indexes.

The RMBS and related CDO sectors lead the pack in both realized and expected future credit losses from U.S. structured finance issuances, according to Fitch Ratings.

Volkswagen is going to issue a $750 million auto lease transaction under its Volkswagen Auto Lease Trust 2011-A.

Ocwen Financial Corp. this morning said it would raise $375 million of new equity and use some of the proceeds to buy $15 billion of mortgage servicing rights from JPMorgan Chase.

The three largest tobacco companies last week exempted 12 states and four territories from arbitration that would force the municipalities to refund money from 2003 settlement overpayments the companies believe they made.

Policymakers who stood by and watched the mortgage bubble inflate, and then explode, ought to pay attention to what's happening in the student loan market.

Wells Fargo this week launched a new unit to provide financial services to publicly traded REITs involved in commercial properties.

Foreclosure filings increased 7% in October from the prior month with servicers and banks recording default notices, scheduled auctions, and lender repossessions on 230,678 U.S. properties, according to new figures compiled by RealtyTrac.

Alliance Data Systems Corp. completed its $350 million credit card deal called World Financial Network Credit Card Master Note Trust.

Further details emerged on the upcoming Barclays Capital U.K. RMBS deal from its Gracechurch master trust structure.

U.S. Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), a member of the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, will today introduce the Mortgage Market Privatization and Standardization Act (S.1834). This bill aims to responsibly unwind GSEs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

UBS is reportedly closing its U.S. ABS business, according to a Dow Jones report that quoted an advance copy of a Thursday edition of Swiss weekly Handelszeitung.

A bipartisan group of senators, Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Kay Hagan (D-NC), and Charles Schumer (D-NY), today sponsored new legislation that would set up a covered bond framework in the U.S.

County and state officials are turning up the heat on MERS, as recent lawsuits filed in Florida, Delaware and Texas challenge the validity and accuracy of the mortgage industry-controlled loan registry.

Ginnie Mae reported a $1.2 billion profit from its secondary market operations in fiscal year 2011 — up 84% from FY 2010 — due to lower loss provisioning.

MarketAxess, a U.S. and European fixed-income electronic trading platform, has made an initial foray into U.S. nonagency residential and commercial mortgage-backed securities markets that appears to be drawing some interest.

Swiss Re has obtained another $130 million in protection via the Successor X Ltd. catastrophe bond program. This program covers North Atlantic hurricane and European windstorm.

American Express is in the market with a $864 million credit card securitization from the bank's American Express Credit Account Master Trust Series 2011-2.

Bill Twombly has joined the Risk Management Group (RMG) team as the managing director of RMG’s due diligence practice. He replaces Dante Jackson who has moved on to pursue other opportunities.