Finance

The financial crisis reached its apex in fall 2008 when major Wall Street firms collapsed. But for the big three rating agencies - Moody's Investors Service, Standard & Poor's and Fitch Ratings - the crisis began at least a year before, when they started issuing massive downgrades of RMBS.

Manager Activity: Autos Book Runner Amount (US$ Mil) Rank Mkt.

Standard & Poor's, along with Moody's Investors Service and Fitch Ratings, downgraded billions of dollars structured transactions in the summer of 2007, resulting in a wave of criticism. So when Deven Sharma was named S&P president on Sept. 1 of that year, he kicked off a reform program that continues today.

Under the brand esoteric comes an array of asset classes. Right now the industry is seeing whole business deals such as the issuance of a $220 million transaction for Church's Chicken earlier this year.

The Treasury Market Pratice Group (TMPG) published it's proposed fails charge for agency MBS and debt set to take effect early next year. The trade group is taking comments on the proposal until June 10.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have agreed to "single track" delinquent borrowers for at least 120 days before servicers begin foreclosure processing under new loss mitigation guidelines sanctioned by the GSE regulator.

The combined earnings of the 12 Federal Home Loan Banks (FHLBs) totaled $358 million in the first quarter, up 10% from a year ago, the FHLB Office of Finance reported Friday morning.But bad investments in private-label MBS continue to be a drag on earnings at several banks and it pushed the Seattle bank into the loss column again.

CMBS investors should brace for one of the largest note auctions in mid-May, according to a report from Barclays Capital.

Recent collateral requirements from the European Central Bank (ECB) appear to be creating, among other things, some demand for new second ratings of older MBS and potentially other deals.

For banks looking to sell nonperforming assets, pricing realities are not ideal. But they have become increasingly tolerable.

Although a handful of bidders have pondered the thought of buying roughly $40 billion of servicing rights being peddled by HSBC Bank USA, it appears the deal has stalled for now.

Michael Wade will be leaving Credit Suisse. Wade was hired by Credit Suisse from Barclays Capital about a year ago as a managing director and co-head of asset finance in the global markets solutions group along with Tricia Hazelwood.

Home equity loans were part and parcel of the mortgage bubble, and the bust has transformed them into one of the mostsignificant loose ends in a crisis that still appears far from resolution.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) today voted unanimously to propose amendments that would remove references to credit ratings in several rules under the Exchange Act.

Mortgage rates declined for the second week in a row and are near or at record lows for 2011.

Fannie Mae reported a 4.2% increase in MBS issuance for March while the other GSEs — Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae — registered month-over-month declines.

General Growth Properties (GGP) has identified 28 properties classified as “Discontinued Operations” of which 17 were previously sold or returned to the lender in its latest earnings report.

Fitch Ratings has downgraded 439 bonds in 244 RMBS transactions to "Dsf." The rating agency explained that the downgraded bonds have all incurred a principal write-down.

The price of commercial real estate loans that are securitized dropped a mere 10 basis points between February and March, showing signs of stabilization in the market, an expert said.

Rising energy and food prices continue to stress the consumer's ability to spend disposable income and can derail the economy if things get much worse, according to James Frischling, president at NewOak Capital.