MBS investor Ellington Financial has pulled its planned initial public offering due to a lack of investor interest, according to combined news reports.
Ellington Financial, a company managed and advised by former Kidder Peabody head MBS trader and market veteran Michael Vranos' Ellington Management Group, had previously filed a preliminary prospectus for an initial public offering.
In other mortgage-related capital markets news, the shares of PennyMac Mortgage Investment Trust continue to be thinly traded. A vulture fund founded by former Countrywide president Stan Kurland to invest in delinquent and underperforming mortgages, the company went public this summer.
As of late Monday morning just 10,000 shares had changed hands. Since the IPO, its shares have traded between $16.70 and $20. Mortgage investors have said recently that the market still appears to be largely cautious when it comes to distressed mortgage product from recent years. "No one wants to be first to catch a falling knife,"
DebtMarket president Michael Sheridan told National Mortgage News. His fledgling company is starting to trade nonmortgage assets and he believes this will eventually be followed by in mortgage asset trade, but it remains uncertain as to when.
