RMBS

When it comes to the "buyback wars" between originators and secondary market investors, the best defense is a good offense. And that entails hiring outside due diligence firms, attorneys, and an army of in-house underwriters whose mission is to refute repurchase claims and fight off allegations that a loan was fraudulent and therefore should be bought back.

Robert Story, Jr., chairman of the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) reacted to the passage of S. 3217, the Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010.

Amherst Securities Group hired Dan Hoffman as head of sales. In this position, Hoffman will be responsible for managing Amherst's fixed-income sales group.

Former head of U.S. asset securitization at Barclays Capital Michael Wade will join Credit Suisse this summer as a managing director and co-head of asset finance in the global markets solutions group, according to an internal memo.

Dan Castro has joined institutional broker dealer BTIG. Further boosting the company’s fixed-income competencies, Castro will be creating a structured finance analytics and strategy group at the firm.

After three weeks of contentious debate, the Senate approved landmark financial reform legislation 59 to 39 late Thursday.

April was not our market's finest moment. It may have been Goldman executives who were in the hot seat, but at times it was as if, yet again, securitization were on trial.

Emerging market players in the structured finance world might soon have a new platform to develop mortgage covered bonds: Peru. Legislation on this product is currently before the Peruvian congress and is piquing the interest of foreign and domestic ABS devotees alike.

A number of recent studies have documented the correlation between negative home equity and the incidence of defaults. A report by CoreLogic released in February stated that when negative equity exceeds either 25% of a loan's balance or $70,000, "homeowners begin to default with the same propensity as investors."

While the FDIC prepares to take away the Safe Harbor privileges from ABS issuers, it has reaped the rewards of securitization by coming to market with three structured note offerings over the last month.