ABS

Bankers are holding nothing back in their efforts to squash a proposal designed to revamp card lending practices.

Sorin Capital Management announced that Matt Chasin will join the firm as chief operating officer, partner and member of the investment committee.

Standard & Poor's cut the ratings of 50 tranches from 11 US cash flow and hybrid CDO transactions. The downgraded tranches have a total issuance amount of $5.502 billion.

The National Association of Realtors is urging the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association to reconsider its policies excluding Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac jumbo loans from "to-be-announced" pools so the two GSEs can obtain better pricing and securitize jumbo mortgages.

Ambac Financial Group, New York, has reported that under U.S. accounting rules it generated net income of $823.1 million in the second quarter despite mortgage-related losses.

UBS AG has tentatively agreed to buy back more than $19 billion of illiquid auction-rate securities it sold to clients, in a settlement that state and federal regulators aim to formally announce Monday.

Manager Activity: AutosFull Credit to Book (Equal if Joint) U.S. Public ABS Market/144A Market

The European Securitization Forum (ESF) has remained steadfast about its belief that the European securitization market will return. However, as the credit turmoil intensifies, the beleaguered market looks less likely to be fixed in the short term.

At this year's Information Management Network Global ABS conference held in Nice, France, Turkish originators discussed the multilateral option for selling their DPR deals (ASR, 6/9/08).

More bad news hit Mexico's construction loan sector over the past couple weeks, and a cross-border transaction is now among the casualties.

The European primary pipeline is still, for the most part, defined by retained deals, although public placement of Unicredit HVB's SME CLO, Geldilux TS 2008-1, shows that for the right paper, investors will still pay up.

There's a new frontier in financial future flows. International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA) sent out RFPs last week for a first-time deal collateralizing its diversified payment rights (DPRs), according to two sources with firsthand knowledge.

The microfinance sector has long enjoyed the benefits of good asset quality and stable credit performance, which have contributed to its rapid growth.

For the July prepayment reports released last Thursday, the slowdown in speeds was in line to slightly less than expected.

The beach was looking a lot better than the office last week for many ABS traders, who noted that the summer slowdown has sapped deal flow, removing any hope of liquidity picking up.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) said on July 30 that it was delaying for one year or until January 1, 2010, the adoption of amendments to FIN 46(R) (consolidation of variable interest entities) and FAS 140 (accounting for transfers and servicing of financial assets and extinguishments of liabilities).

WLJ Partners, a Coral Gables, Fla., investment fund, announced its formation Thursday and said it has raised $200 million to buy nonperforming commercial real estate loans.

Fannie Mae swung to a second-quarter loss as the largest buyer of home loans booked $5.35 billion in credit-costs from boosting loss provisions and charge-offs.

Fitch Ratings is reviewing its market value decline (MVD) assumptions for German residential properties.