Finance

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is planning on selling more assets from 20 CDOs forming part of its Maiden Lane III (ML III) portfolio. Offering circulars were released today.

Although “sloppier” Alt-A fixed-rate bonds are attractively priced versus their prime counterparts, Amherst Securities Group (ASG) analysts said in a recent report that the collateral is converging.

Harley Davidson Credit Corp. is planning to sell a $519 million securitization under its Harley-Davidson Motorcycle Trust 2012-1. The transaction is collateralized by motorcycle contract backed notes.

Nearly three-quarters of senior tranches of the tobacco settlement bonds will default should cigarette consumption in the U.S. continue on its current rate of annual decline, said Moody's Investors Service in a report.Specifically, the rating agency finds that if the decline in consumption continues at a 3% to 4% pace, as Moody's projects, bonds constituting 74% of the aggregate outstanding balance of all the tobacco settlement bonds will default.

Moody’s Investors Service said that the CMBS conduit transactions that it expects to rate in 3Q12 suggest that the average Moody’s Loan- to-Value (MLTV) ratio, which is the rating agency’s main measure of balloon refinance risk, will increase to 102.1% from 97.8% in the third quarter. Given this expected 4.3% jump, the MLTV in the third quarter will average above 100% for the first time in CMBS 2.0.

Last summer rumors were spreading that a private equity firm had amassed $1 billion in cash and was eyeing investments in mortgage banking firms. A year later it appears that no such deals were struck by the unnamed fund, but that hasn’t stopped the talk about PE firms still looking at the sector.

In a Bank of America Merrill Lynch conference call held yesterday, Theresa O’Neill, an asset-backed strategist from the firm, said that participants in the consumer ABS market need to keep a careful eye on certain regulatory developments related to securitization, namely the bank capital rules, risk retention, as well as any new rules from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).

Colony Capital LLC is one of the winning bidders on a Fannie Mae REO sale sponsored by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), according to bidders and other sources familiar with the matter.

Freddie Mac reported more new record lows for 30- and 15-year fixed mortgage rates as well as 5/1 hybrid ARMs.

Homes sales and prices – along with construction activity – have improved over the past few months, but a true recovery in the housing sector is still far away due to tight mortgage credit, according to Federal Reserve monetary policy officials.

San Bernardino County is forging ahead with deliberations on a proposal to seize delinquent mortgages, despite its largest city's decision Tuesday night to seek bankruptcy.

CoreLogic and FICO this week released the FICO Mortgage Score Powered by CoreLogic. This new offering evaluates the traditional credit data from the national credit data repositories and the supplemental consumer credit data in the CoreLogic CoreScore.

More than 90 members of the House of Representatives are urging the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to provide a legal safe harbor in the final qualified mortgage rule to protect lenders from frivolous lawsuits.

McDermott Will & Emery has hired structured finance attorney Perry Sayles to its New York office as a partner in its financial institutions advisory practice group.

CMBS data provider Trepp has partnered with BlackRock's iShares Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) business to bring together the iShares Barclays CMBS Bond Fund into its CMBS analytics product, a release from Trepp said.

A true bottom has formed under house prices but that assumption could be challenged later this year as the share of distressed sales once again outpaces home sales during the fall and winter months, according to Wells Fargo.

In a conference call yesterday, John McElravey, head of consumer ABS research at Wells Fargo, said that the U.S. auto ABS sector is now the “new benchmark for the consumer ABS market” replacing the credit card sector.

Lawyers for National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) asked a federal court Tuesday to bar potentially embarrassing testimony by NCUA board members Debbie Matz and Gigi Hyland and former chief corporate examiner Kent Buckham in the civil trial over the 2009 collapse of WesCorp FCU, which is projected to cost credit unions $7 billion to resolve.

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) reported a slight 2.1% decline in mortgage application activity as a slowing in refinances was partially offset by a rise in purchases. Aiding activity as well were new lows set in mortgage rates. Results were adjusted for the Fourth of July holiday.