ABS

At the American Securitization Forum's (ASF) conference last month held in Las Vegas, a survey presented in one of the panels showed that recovery for the U.S. securitization market won't happen until 2011.

With the worsening economic outlook, structured finance market participants have learned that it is necessary to read the fine print when it comes to managing their portfolios.

President Obama recently unveiled an initiative designed to support the housing market and reduce the catastrophic number of foreclosures. While the GSE-centric plan generally represents an incremental change from earlier programs, its controversial inclusion of a proposal for bankruptcy cram-downs may ultimately aid large numbers of homeowners by increasing the number of loans that ultimately are modified.

The Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) confirmed continuing decline in the U.K. for buy to let lending.

EFG Eurobank Ergasias closed its €3.3 billion ($4.2 billion) Greek securitization of receivables. The transaction was arranged by Citigroup and Deutsche Bank.

Intercontinental Exchange, an operator of regulated global futures exchanges and over-the-counter (OTC) markets, announced that ICE Clear Europe will create a new service known as ICE Trust Europe.

Moody's Investors Service is again increasing its loss expectations for U.S. subprime RMBS issued between 2005 and 2007, raising them to a range of 28% to 32% of the original pool balance from 22% and placing 7,942 tranches of subprime RMBS with an original balance of $680 billion on review for possible downgrade.

Capmark Financial Group, Horsham, Pa., has a preliminary pre-tax loss of $800 million in the fourth quarter of 2008.

The Royal Bank of Scotland, which is now majority-owned by U.K. taxpayers, plans to “drastically scale back activity in structured real estate, leveraged and project finance, and exit lending in these areas entirely,” the bank said Thursday.

Steven Hilfer has joined Experian as senior director of business development to support the firm’s capital markets business.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) concluded the sale of $1.45 billion of distressed performing and nonperforming residential and commercial construction loans using two private/public partnership deals.

Broadpoint Capital, a subsidiary of Broadpoint Securities Group, hired Chris Lau, Ryan King, Brian Horan, Joseph Lyons, and Mike Regan for Broadpoint DESCAP, its MBS/ABS and rates division.

Lender Processing Services (LPS) hired mortgage banking veteran Pete Maselli to the firm's office of the enterprise team as a senior vice president of strategy and business development.

The International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) announced that its board of directors elected three new members.

Chief executives from a number of leading European insurers that form the Pan-European Insurance Forum (PEIF) published a paper called Insurance View: Regulatory Consequences of Financial Crisis.

February remittance reports — for the January collection period — showed monthly aggregate 60+ day delinquencies climbing 66 basis points, 91 basis points, 118 basis points, and 224 basis points (compared with rises of 56 basis points, 54 basis points, 158 basis points, and 167 basis points last month) for series 06-1, 06-2, 07-1, and 07-2, respectively.

The Council of the Islamic Financial Services Board (IFSB) has recently adopted two new capital requirements standards for Sukuk securitizations and other real estate investments.

Markit and Creditex, along with six major credit derivative dealers, announced the results of a credit event auction conducted to facilitate settlement of loan-only credit default swap (LCDS) trades referencing Ferretti first-lien loans.

The International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) announced that major industry participants have committed to the use of central counterparty clearing for CDS in the European Union (EU).

Waves of CMBS downgrades are following in the wake of Moody's Investors Service's review of large loan and single borrower U.S. CMBS ratings, in which the rating agency found the current economic recession is hurting cash flows and likely to lead to a marked increase in term defaults.