Finance

Latin America's two largest markets - Brazil and Mexico - will present ABS players with different sets of risks and opportunities next year.

Russia, Turkey and neighboring emerging markets saw only scattered ABS issuance last year, and that largely depended on support from government-linked institutions, development banks or regular bank funding. Bond investors were mostly absent.

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

For 2010, U.S. public ABS issuance reached $53.51 billion, according to preliminary figures from the ASR Scorecards database.

While 2010 was an all-out scramble by Democratic leaders to harness outrage over the financial crisis to push regulatory reform over the finish line, the legislative outlook for this year is quite different.

Federal regulators reminded banks Thursday to include new data on noninterest-bearing deposits and reverse mortgages among other additions to their fourth-quarter call reports.

With the administration's blueprint for overhauling the GSEs due in January, Barclays Capital has offered its own vision.

If Ally Financial can make peace with Fannie Mae, maybe other lenders can too.

The National Association of Realtors' (NAR) gauge of future home sales rose 3.5% in November after a 9.2% jump in October.

When a prominent investment banker recently predicted another 300 banks would fail from wounds inflicted during the financial crisis, some investors in trust-preferred securities hailed his comments as good news.

After decreasing last week, fixed related mortgage rates moved higher for the week ending Dec. 30. According to Freddie Mac's survey, 30-year fixed mortgage rates jumped five basis points to 4.86% with an average 0.8 point.

Leveraged loan issuance doubled in 2010 and is expected to continue at a healthy pace in 2011, according to a report published by Bloomberg today.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) has expelled APS Financial Corp., Austin, Texas, and barred its former president and its former broker from the industry in connection with an alleged scheme involving an elderly investor and markups on CMOs as well as other types of securities.

Heading into 2010, the mortgage market was looking at the Federal Reserve winding down its purchases of agency MBS with spreads projected to widen and yields/interest rates to rise as a result. Meanwhile, technicals were expected to deteriorate to some extent with the removal of such a large buyer.

The number of delinquent mortgages rose while foreclosures also jumped in the third quarter, according to a report released Wednesday by federal regulators.

BlackRock, which manages $3.4 trillion of assets for investors, will launch its own trading platform inside the firm, according to the Financial Times.

Allstate Insurance Co. has sued Bank of America to recoup losses suffered from its purchase of over $700 million in Countrywide-issued MBS.

U.S. marketed ABS volume is now at $89.5 billion with 197 deals in 2010 as of three days before 2010 ends, according to data from Dealogic.

FBR Capital Markets, a 21-year-old investment bank hobbled during the financial crisis by a bloated cost structure and ties to a mortgage REIT, seems to be making all of the right moves. But it is still waiting for them to pay off.

Ally Financial has agreed to pay Fannie Mae $462 million to settle repurchase demands for breaches of representations and warranties related to whole loans and private-label securities the lender sold the GSE.