ABS

The investment banking firm Sandler O’Neill & Partners added a team of five sales professionals to its Chicago-based, fixed-income group.

Australian deposit-taking institutions are likely to issue covered bonds once proposed legislation is enacted, according to a recent report by Standard & Poor’s. The agency added that the highest rated and larger originators are most apt to float these deals.

State attorneys general and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) officials on Monday agreed to cooperate on enforcement actions and work together to prevent evasions of consumer protection laws.

Nissan Motor Acceptance Corp. (NMAC) is issuing a $1.04 billion transaction under its Nissan Auto Receivables Owner Trust (NAROT).

Investors have proven slow to return to the European securitization market. The limited appetite has been matched by a lackluster amount of securitization supply that market analysts said has created an imbalance in secondary and primary securitization pricing.

Churchill Financial Group is jumping on the business development company bandwagon.

Spanish pharmaceutical company Grifols launched a $105 million private placement transaction Wednesday, with Mesirow Financial as its agent, a source familiar with the situation confirmed.

While saying JPMorgan Chase & Co. had enough capital already to comply with new Basel III requirements, Jamie Dimon, the bank's chairman and chief executive, said regulators had gone too far in crafting the international capital accord.

Jay Hohman has landed a position as managing director at Cohen & Company Capital Markets.

As industry participants debate rules designed to restart securitization of private-label mortgages, another corner of this market is showing signs of life: the nonguaranteed portion of loans backed by the Small Business Administration (SBA).

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

Last week the CRE Finance Council (CREFC) described how its members are seeking some flexibility with respect to risk-retention requirements in a Wall Street Journal article.

Investors have proven slow to return to the European securitization market. The limited appetite has been matched by a lackluster amount of securitization supply that market analysts said has created an imbalance in secondary and primary securitization pricing.

Formulating the rules to implement the Dodd-Frank Act has proven to be challenging. Regulators both missed and moved deadlines to accomplish this monumental task.

Two years ago, Shariah-compliant bonds, or sukuk, began facing the first major test of their structures. The global crisis, paired with overinvestment in the Gulf Region, conspired to trigger a number of defaults that some observers believed would prompt investors to drill deeper into deals, and possibly favor those that were true securitizations.

The FDIC held a meeting March 29 to discuss its risk retention rules and the much debated QRM qualification.

Two and a half years after the global financial markets imploded, the dust has begun to settle, providing a clearer view on which sectors of the securitization market will thrive-and which won't.

Despite recent reports of people changes at some of Wall Street's biggest players in the securitization market, finding work, even for experienced hands, is still no easy task.

After the Japanese crisis, CMBS secondary market activity was the most impacted versus all other securitization sectors, experts said.

For 1Q11, U.S. public ABS issuance reached $13.62 billion, according to preliminary figures from the ASR Scorecards database. This is an increase from a year ago when industry volumes reached only $9.4 billion