ABS

Ambac Financial Group, parent of the junk-rated bond insurer Ambac Assurance Corp., said in a regulatory filing Monday morning that it may be forced to file for bankruptcy by yearend because it has been unable to raise fresh capital.

The National Credit Union Association (NCUA) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) each priced sizable CMOs in mid-September that are unlikely to be the last because of their incremental yield and issuer financing benefits, and because more banks are destined to fail.

Petroleos de Brasil has a hold on high finance players that at times seems to border on the hypnotic. ABS players have also been loath to look away as the company waves its epic $224-billion investment plan in their faces.

The Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) proposal of Oct. 13 to require issuers to review the underlying assets in their ABS should create a much more uniform set of review standards - to the benefit of investors. However, it could significantly alter, perhaps to the ABS market's detriment, how the reviews are performed.

The so-called foreclosure scandal has grabbed headlines over the past month. ASR's November issue looks beyond the mainstream coverage to its effect on bondholders.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) recently finalized its Safe Harbor that protects the assets that are transferred to bank-sponsored securitization vehicles from a financial institution's FDIC receivership.

With the rising foreclosure numbers being a major issue in the market right now, Paladin Strategic Partners is responding to the problem by providing socially responsible solutions.

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

Profiting from a relationship with behemoth Petroleos de Brasil, Brazil’s Odebrecht Oleo e Gas is tapping the structured finance for a whopping $1.5 billion. Santander and HSBC are reportedly arranging the deal. Neither bank returned requests for comment.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) is establishing a new effective date of May 16, 2011 for reporting ABS to the trade reporting and compliance engine (TRACE).

Standard & Poor’s predicts that the volume of outstanding structured finance securities in the U.S. as a percentage of GDP will fall to the 23%-25% range by the end of 2011, the weighting it had in 2003-2004.

Swiss Re has securitized $175 million of notes backed by extreme mortality risk, which is the company's third deal in the last 12 months under its Vita Capital IV program.

Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) Chairman Sheila Bair became the first regulator to publicly shoulder some of the blame for foreclosure problems at several servicers, saying the agencies should have seen it coming.

Citigroup Chief Executive Vikram Pandit offered up a scathing review Monday of Basel III, saying the new rules do nothing to reduce pro-cyclicality or to level the playing field among different countries and differently regulated financial institutions.

U-Haul International (UHI) is in the market with a $155 million securitization called U-Haul S Fleet Series 2010-1. The offering is backed by a pool of new and to-be-acquired box trucks.

SNR Denton has hired Ricardo Martinez as a partner in its capital markets group. Martinez, who joins SNR Denton from Allen & Overy, will reside in the New York office.

The American Securitization Forum (ASF) expressed its support for the portion of the Dodd-Frank Act that addressed conflicts of interest in securitization in a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) today.

Regulators took their first step this week toward drafting new rules that would require lenders to retain some risk before selling loans into the secondary market.

The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System issued a report yesterday on the potential effect of credit risk retention requirements on securitization.

The Brazilian Finance Ministry’s recent hike of the IOF tax on foreign investment into fixed income investments to 6% from 4% is bound to have some kind of impact on the appetite of overseas money for local securitization products. The increase comes after a 2 percentage point hike earlier this month.