Finance

Whether the New York Insurance Department (NYID) can appeal a ruling that ordered it to hand over e-mails and documents regarding the restructuring of bond insurer MBIA Insurance Corp. could be decided soon.

The surge in refinancing, now down to a virtual trickle, was officially pronounced dead and gone at the Mortgage Bankers Association's (MBA) annual secondary market conference in New York."We've lost borrowers who have the ability (to refinance) and those who have the ability no longer have the incentive," Michael Fratantoni, the MBA's director of research and economics, told the meeting.

The commodities and listed derivatives firm under the guise of former New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine said today that it has taken steps to expanding its capital markets and institutional sales teams with the firm’s recent slew of new hires.

The servicing-related consent orders that the nation’s megabanks signed to appease banking regulators could impact smaller servicers too, according to consultants at Newbold Advisors.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) closed on a sale of securities as part of a securitization backed by around $394.3 million of performing commercial and multi-family mortgages from 13 failed banks.

Integrated Asset Services (IAS) appointed Paul Sveen, a residential mortgage and structured finance business executive, as its chief executive officer.

Ambac Assurance Corp.’s rehabilitation plan won’t take effect in May as planned, meaning that frozen claims on roughly $50 billion of risky assets will remain unpaid until further notice.

Residential delinquencies have stabilized and charge-offs have eased, and the second dip in home prices has not been remotely as severe as its older twin. Nonetheless, enormous pools of home equity loans that in fact have little or no home equity standing behind them continue to sow doubts about the health of the nation's largest banking companies.

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) appointed Marcia Davies as Chief of Staff, effective immediately.

Clayton Holdings partnered with MBSData, which provides accurate and timely deal and loan-level information on public non-agency MBS, to offer new loan-level data risk identification analytics as well as enhanced reporting solutions to fixed-income mortgage sector investors.

The earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan last month gave the catastrophe bond market its biggest test since Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008, and the early indicators suggest that it passed.

One of the gross oversimplifications of the mortgage boom and bust is that banks were more inclined to make risky loans because they were able to get them off their books through securitization. In fact, one of the most troublesome categories of bubble-era lending has been sitting on banks' balance sheets all along.

For years esoteric ABS kept its little brother status in a securitization market that was largely dominated by more conventional asset classes.

CoreLogic and Asset Securitization Report sponsored a Web seminar called Today's Best Practices in RMBS Due Diligence. The event was moderated by Michael Stanton, executive vice president for SourceMedia's capital markets division.

As part of a joint initiative, the FHFA and HUD recently released a presentation outlining potential revisions to the current system of servicer compensation. The initiative's stated goals are 1) improving customer service for borrowers, 2) reducing financial risks for servicers, and 3) helping servicers better manage their pipeline of nonperforming loans (NPLs). In light of the asset's unusual economics, an examination of servicing compensation is long overdue. However, the initiative's proposed changes to the compensation structure for NPL servicing runs counter to the notion of reducing the mortgage market's dependence on the government.

ABS investors' search for yield has taken them to an interesting place, where products that were once marginal are now the main attraction. In vogue are decidedly esoteric deals, ranging from whole business securitizations to structured settlement transactions.

The government's proposals for mortgage risk retention, aimed at getting sponsors of securitizations to retain some skin in the game, could potentially change the commercial real estate (CRE) financing landscape, while creating opportunity for some.

Prepayment responsiveness has been significantly reduced because of the housing/financial crisis that has resulted in very tight credit conditions and significant home value declines. Analysts expect this phenomenon to remain for some years, especially as home values continue to weaken and underwriting standards tighten.

European securitization market players will apparently put more "skin-in-the-game" than their U.S. counterparts if U.S. regulatory requirements for risk retention move ahead as written.

As with their counterparts in other areas of structured finance, emerging market players have been mulling over the question of where exactly their deals fit in the new regulatory landscapes of Western Europe and the U.S.