ABS

Despite signs the economy is recovering, the Federal Reserve Board announced Thursday it would keep several liquidity facilities in place into early 2010, while allowing other programs to expire.

Auctions of Treasury securities usually aren’t anything special for dealer firms on Wall Street, but this week’s sale of roughly $40 billion worth of two-year paper for the U.S. government was something more meaningful for Jefferies & Co.

June remittance data, which reflect May activity, showed prepayments dropping further inspite of the lower mortgage rates and loss severities trending lower after rising the previous month, according to a report from Bank of America/ Merrill Lynch analysts.

A gigantic RMBS priced today in Mexico, originated by the fund for government agency Instituto de Seguridad y Servicios Sociales de los Trabajadores del Estado.

Vertical Capital Solutions (VCAP Solutions), in partnership with Vertical Capital, launched a valuation and advisory business providing a wide range of services to clients, Vertical Capital said in a release.

The International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) emerging markets committee (EMC) has published a consultation report titled Impact on and Responses of Emerging Markets to the Financial Crisis.

New York-based financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald has expanded it is London office and will hire as many as 100 new investment bankers, traders and other staff as it nearly doubles its size in the U.K., according to several reports.

Freddie Survey Shows Small Rate Increase

Recovery in the economy as a whole appears likely to continue in the second half of this year but parts of the U.S. housing market may remain bogged by roughly 4 million foreclosed or seriously delinquent properties concentrated in certain states, Barclays researchers said as part of a global outlook press briefing in New York.

The Federal Housing Administration insured $27.3 billion in single-family mortgages in April — up 8% from the previous month due to higher mortgage purchase volume.

Standard & Poor’s published its first monthly European ABCP surveillance snapshot, the rating agency said in a release.

Fitch Ratings assigned Green Loan Services a CMBS large loan special servicer rating of ‘CLLSS2-’. This is the first assignment of the recently published rating.

Jason Kravitt, senior partner in the securitization practice at Mayer Brown, focused on the implications of last week’s Department of the Treasury announcement of new regulations on securitization. Kravitt spoke on a conference call late last week to discuss the significant components of the new regulations, specifically the rule that requires issuers to hold on to 5% of the loans they securitize. “If this is not handled the right way, this defeats the purpose securitization is supposed to serve which is to allow firms to reuse capital so that they can keep generating new credit,” Kravitt said.

The Federal Open Market Committee reiterated its existing commitment to ongoing temporary programs involving the purchase of agency mortgage-backed securities and debt as well as Treasury securities as it once again left short-term rates unchanged at its most recent meeting.

Standard & Poor's yesterday downgraded bond insurer Ambac Assurance Corp. to 'BBB' from 'A', saying it believes the company is "effectively in runoff." The rating is on negative watch.

Fitch Ratings has withdrawn the short term rating of ‘F1+’ of Eureka Securitisation Plc & Eureka Securitisation's ABCP, the rating agency said in today’s release.

The July 7 Term-Asset Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF) will be available only for non-mortgage asset-backed securities, and will for the first time include prime-based loans for private student loan ABS, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York said this week.

Mayer Brown is in advanced talks with several firms in London to significantly increase its capital markets and corporate practice groups in the area, according to published reports.

New-home sales edged down 0.6% in May after rising during the previous two months and builders continued to trim their inventories of unsold homes.

For the first time since the week of May 15 the Mortgage Bankers Association Weekly Applications Survey Market Composite Index increased.