ABS

Mayer Brown has hired Stephen Rooney for its New York office as a partner and co-leader of its insurance finance group.

As a regulatory deadline rapidly approaches, big banks are becoming increasingly anxious about how they should comply with a ban on proprietary trading.

Ally Bank is set to sell a $500 million flooplan deal under its Ally Master Owner Trust. The transaction is backed by new and used car inventory and light and medium duty truck and van inventory.

Global structured finance issuance's modest pace in 1Q12 is credit positive for new-issuance in these products that include ABS, RMBS, CMBS and CLOs, according to an emailed note from Standard & Poor's this morning.

Utility tariff securitizations - which allow former monopolies to recover upfront their investments in equipment, deferred power procurement or the cost of storm damage - have not always been controversial.

In the ASR Scorecards database's preliminary public lead manager rankings for 1Q12, Citigroup Global Markets took the No. 1 spot with a 12.6% market share and $4.8 billion sold. Citi rose three spots from 1Q11 with a 14.7% market share and $2.07 billion sold. ASR's 1Q12 numbers are as of March 26 while its 1Q11 are as March 31, 2011.

The latest wave of proposed European regulations on rating agencies, known as CRA3, contains a rule that has unsettled players from every corner of the financial market: enforced ratings rotation.

Manager Activity: Autos Book Runner Amount (US$ Mil) Rank Mkt.

Experian Information Solutions' research indicates that, while the credit quality of auto loans may be slipping, it remains high enough to ensure the strong performance of the 2011 and 2012 vintages of securities backed by such loans.

Federal regulators ought to start over on the Volcker Rule, and get back to basics.

FirstEnergy of Ohio is said to be prepping a $500 million securitization of deferred energy costs.

State Street Global Markets' Investor Confidence Index(ICI) for March 2012 showed that the outlook of both American and European institutional investors improved.

Swiss Re has done a $200 million 144A multi-peril natural catastrophe risk deal via Combine Re. This offering is the first catastrophe bond to combine the risks of two reinsured parties.

New York's Suffolk County's tobacco ABS is in the market. The deal, worth $38.1 million, is called Suffolk Tobacco Asset Securitization Corp. Series 2012.

In competitive sports, being first is always the goal. But the distance between the U.S. — at the head of the pack — and the rest of the world in crafting financial reforms is becoming a major hurdle for implementing the Dodd-Frank Act.

The American Securitization Forum (ASF) today submitted a letter urging regulators to delay the Volcker Rule's implementation.

European banks will likely reprise their former role as major RMBS buyers if the asset class becomes eligible for Basel liquidity requirements, as proposed in the CRD IV implementation draft put out by European Commission, according to analysts at RBS in their weekly ABS report.

The European structured finance market has seen a rise in the ratio of deals sold to investors over those that are retained, according to analysts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.