St. George's Bank and Macquerie Bank of Australia are in the market with RMBS deals, each for a total equivalent of $1billion. St. George's Crusade 2001, led by Credit Suisse First Boston and Maquerie's Puma 2001, led by Deutsche Bank, will launch this month. Additionally, the U.K.-based Northern Rock is also said to be coming to market this month with Granite 2001, a $1.5 billion RMBS transaction via Salomon Smith Barney.
Brazil's Banco Itau, Banco do Brasil, Unibanco, and Banco Bardesco are rumored to have request-for-proposals (RFPs) out for MT 100 deals. Banco do Brasil closed a $250 million Japanese worker remittance transaction earlier this summer led by Merrill Lynch (See ASR 7/23/01).
Last week Moody's Investors Service reported the largest year-over-year spike in credit card charge-offs since July 1997, yet the underlying securitizations are still far from being hit by the economic slowdown, the agency said.
Moody's said that charge-offs rose for the sixth consecutive month to 6.47% in July, up from 5.16% in July 2000. Delinquencies, for the eighth consecutive month, rose to 5.06%, up from 4.41% the year prior.
Excess spread in the securitizations, however, remains relatively robust, Moody's reports. The yield off collateral, which includes finance charges and any ancillary fees, has remained stable at 19.39%, despite the several interest rate cuts this year.
With no plans to bring a retail auto loan-backed deal in the fourth quarter, Nissan is exploring the possibility of bringing an auto lease-backed offering either late this year or early next year. The company recently closed on a $3.5 billion warehousing facility, backed by both auto loan and auto lease collateral. Also the Canadian finance unit of Nissan plans to securitize between C$200 million and C$300 million in the coming month.
