RMBS

Mortgage lenders that finance vacation homes on the Jersey Shore of the Garden State may have more to worry about this year than just the negative image of beach towns caused by the MTV reality series of the same name.

Ginnie Mae said a recent change it made to its Ginnie II MBS program will help mortgage bankers with their warehouse lines of credit.

Loan securitizers are bracing for an invasion of backseat drivers. By Wednesday, June 2, issuers and rating agencies must comply with a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rule designed to encourage more unsolicited opinions on ABS. The regulator wants to remove the conflicts of interest in the ratings process that led to inflated ratings in the past and contributed to the financial crisis.

Barclays has arranged a $350 million term loan backing Ocwen Loan Servicing’s acquisition of HomEq Servicing, according to Bloomberg.

CIT Group has hired a new credit chief along with a new head of administrative affairs, the New York-based middle-market lender announced Tuesday.

Any examination of the causes of the financial crisis is exceedingly complex, with a variety of causes that include bad lending, monetary policy mistakes, a bubble in real estate prices, bank capitalization, etc. In this light, the recent congressional hearings on Goldman Sachs should not be dismissed as mere theatrics, as they highlighted the industry's willingness and ability to unload defective transactions into the market. A candid assessment of the causes of the crisis and the future of securitized lending forces us to address why the "market forces" that had protected investors in prior years failed to prevent the market from being flooded with flawed securities. It is imperative that we understand and identify market functions, determine why they broke down and devise both market- and regulation-based remedies.

One of the recurring themes at the SiLAS 2010 conference was the need for investors to get to know the collateral behind deals like never before.

The enthusiasm for covered bonds in Latin America was palpable at SiLAS 2010, but challenges, both big and small, still remain for the birth of this product in the major markets of the region.

On the sidelines of the SiLAS 2010, ASR's Felipe Ossa had a conversation with Ignacio Farias, CEO of Patrimonio, a housing finance company in Mexico. Belonging to the group of recently beleaguredbeleaguered nonbank entities known as Sofols, Patrimonio has seen its mortgage originations fall by half so far this year, and that was from an already dismal 2009.

The SiLAS 2010 conference featured lively discussion of the role of trustees in Latin American transactions. In Mexico, especially, it almost seemed as if trustees were out to lunch while flows were diverted from Metrofinanciera's bridge loans deals, which inevitably led to distress.