ABS

At the recent American Securitization Forum (ASF) Sunset Seminar, panelists looked back at the first year of Dodd-Frank, saying regulators are still missing the bigger picture.

Europe's reenactment of last summer's sovereign debt crisis heated up as talks of a Greek debt default intensified once again this July.

Greek bailout talks intensified once again this July, a repeat in many ways of last summer's discussions. But structured finance issuance is taking it much harder this year, as Nora Colomer examines in the cover story. In July two actively marketed European securitizations were abruptly pulled when the market got too volatile. Other issuers went the retained route rather than face the risks associated with bringing new-issue deals to market.

Most market participants believed that Congress was going to raise the debt ceiling before the Aug. 2 deadline. However, it was largely expected that the U.S. long-term debt rating was going to be downgraded from its 'AAA' status by at least one of the two big rating agencies.

Bank regulators expressed frustration July 27 over a little-noticed and initially uncontroversial provision of Dodd-Frank that forces them to eliminate references to credit ratings in most bank regulations.

Some investors are wary about the $8.5 billion Bank of America agreed to pay in the MBS-related settlement it worked out with 22 large money managers, but if approved the bank will be giving up more than a one-time cash payout. The settlement imposes requirements on the servicer that appear likely to portend long-term and much broader benefits for investors.

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

Chief executives from the country's largest banks sent a letter to the White House and Congress Thursday urging them to reach an agreement the week of July 25 to raise the debt ceiling.

Turkey’s debut covered bond consists of three tranches pricing between 200 basis points and 250 basis points over Euribor, a spread that will be swapped into a Turkish rate for originator Sekerbank at the time of the closing, said Huib-Jan de Ruijter, director of financial markets at Dutch development bank the FMO, one of the investors in the deal.

Greenwich Associates released its annual list of top leaders in the U.S. institutional fixed-income trading market today, revealing a deadlock for first between Barclays Capital, Deutsche Bank, and JPMorgan with each firm holding an 11.5% overall market share.

Friday's European bank stress tests revealed that all securitization positions in European banking and trading books were stressed, according to market reports.

Over 80% of 'Aaa'-rated European RMBS and ABS have maintained their ratings throughout the crisis, spanning from May 2007 to May 2011, according to a new report by Moody’s Investors Service.

Finacity Corp. announced today in a release that it had paired with Germany's Norddeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale (NORD/LB) to increase an existing trade-receivables securitization for Alliance One international from $100 million to $125 million.

Portugal and Greece won't lose access to European Central Bank (ECB) liquidity, said the ECB in separate announcements.

Moody’s Investors Service downgraded Portugal by four notches to 'Ba2' from 'Baa1' with a negative outlook yesterday.

Chariot Funding, Falcon Asset Securitization Co. and Jupiter Securitization Co. have together funded a $3.024 billion auto ABS. JPMorgan Chase Bank serves as the administrative agent for all three conduits, which are partially supported, multiseller ABCP programs.

Until the financial crisis brought CLO issuance to a virtual halt, CLOs were among the largest and fastest growing structured products in the marketplace, representing approximately 60% of institutional participation in syndicated loans in 2006. While the long-term impact of the Dodd-Frankrisk retention rules on CLOs remains uncertain, the short-term outlook for new CLO issuance is promising. As spreads on the triple-A rated tranches of CLOs have continued to tighten, the arbitrage on CLO collateral has become increasingly attractive in recent months. For the first time since the onset of the financial crisis, CLOs are showing signs of a sustained revival.

The U.S. Congress and U.S. regulatory agencies have imposed or proposed broad-based and aggressive laws and rulemaking in response to the failure of securitizations directly or indirectly backed by U.S. subprime residential mortgage loans originated in the several years prior to the onset of the financial crisis in 2007. Notwithstanding this aggressive response, there is no empirical evidence that transactions backed by other types of assets, including asset-backed securities (ABS) of foreign issuers, have been prone to such failures or merit coverage in the same regulatory scheme as applies to securitizations backed by subprime residential mortgage loans.

From Brussels to D.C., the season of powwows is here, and ASR's editors have certainly been getting around.

A common denominator in housing finance reform is the importance of the role that the private-label RMBS market must play.