ABS

Moody's Investors Service has placed the 'Baa1' senior debt rating of XL Capital and the 'A1' IFS ratings of XL's insurance operating subsidiaries on review for possible downgrade after XL acted to increase capital, according to today’s Moody’s release.

Armins Rusis will join Markit as executive vice president and global co-head of fixed income, according to today’s release from the firm.

Clifford Chance plans to open a new office in Abu Dhabi on Aug. 3.

The remittance reports for July for the June collection period released Friday were in line with analysts' expectations, Barclays Capital stated.

Standard & Poor's today affirmed its 'AAA'/'A-1+' senior unsecured debt ratings on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The student loan sector is still in relatively good health, all things considered. In fact, Fitch Ratings released a report last week saying that for the most part, student loan ABS has continued its stable performance despite the negative funding issues plaguing the market.

It's news to no one who follows Mexican ABS that while credit markets have soured across the board, they've grown especially leery of deals collateralizing assets originated by non-bank housing finance companies called Sofols.

IndyMac Bank's failure, and the cleanup that followed, were shocking, but not unprecedented in the structured finance market.

The largest Spanish corporate default, Martinsa-Fadesa, a Spanish homebuilder, signals potential risks in SME portfolios, Deutsche Bank analysts said.

The U.S. House of Representatives approval of the long-awaited housing bill did not boost morale among traders last week since it came after a slew of negative ABS market announcements.

Fitch Ratings said last week that the number of CLO managers is likely to decline by about 20% over the next three years as a result of managers being replaced or withdrawing from the market.

Last week, Fitch Ratings upped the rating on the only outstanding future-flow credit card deal from Russia, an initially $300 million issue from Rosbank. The boost spanned five notches, taking the deal to ‘A-' from ‘BB'. It came two weeks after Moody's Investors Service elevated its rating on the deal to ‘Baa3' from ‘Ba2'.

Finacity Corp. recently closed a trade receivables transaction for Papel, Carton y Derivados, a Mexican paperboard and containerboard maker that markets under the slogan "PCD does it for you."

The tone in the first half of the week was decidedly more supportive for MBS compared to the previous week. Despite a further sell-off in Treasurys, convexity selling was limited. With spreads at historical wides, many investors became opportunistic buyers.

The restructuring of structured investment vehicle, SIV Portfolio plc, which was formerly known as Cheyne Finance plc, could pave the way for similar transactions. This is not only the case for the SIV sector but for other restructurings in CDOs as well as the broader structured finance market.

New home dropped 0.6% in June to 530,000, although the result was better than expected, according to an RBS Greenwich Capital report. This particularly true if you take into consideration that the figures in March, April, and May were all revised up by a combined 50,000 units.

Single-family existing-home sales fell 2.6% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.86 million units in June from a pace of 4.99 million in May, and are 15.5% lower than the 5.75 million-unit rate in June 2007, according to yesterday’s National Association of Realtors release.

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

Freddie Mac reported that 66% of Freddie Mac-owned loans that were refinanced resulted in new mortgages with loan amounts that were at least 5% higher than the original loan balance in 2Q08,.

Freddie Mac reported a huge jump in mortgage rates this week. The 30-year fixed mortgage rate averaged 6.63%, up 37 basis points from last week's 6.26% average. This is the highest mortgage rates have been since August 2, 2007 when it was at 6.68%.