ABS

London-based credit asset manager Cairn Financial Products is now the successor collateral manager for White Marlin CDO 2007-1, a $1.2 billion investment grade corporate CDO.

The formation of the Counterparty Risk Management Policy Group (CRMPGIII) was announced today and will be chaired by E. Gerald Corrigan, managing director at Goldman Sachs and Douglas Flint, group finance director at HSBC. The group will be Co-Chaired by Messers Corrigan and Flint.

CIFG Holding Ltd., the holding company for CIFG’s financial guaranty subsidiaries, named David Rockwell as chief risk officer with overall responsibility for the company’s risk management activities and surveillance functions. CIFG also announced Thierry Dissaux will serve as head of European operations and CEO for CIFG Europe.

Alistair Darling, the U.K. chancellor of the exchequer, said that the G7 leading economies need to take action to ease the ongoing strains on the global financial markets and to strengthen the financial system's resilience.

Moody's Investors Service downgraded Sigma Finance's Gordian Knot-managed SIV senior ratings to A2'/P2' from Aaa'/'P1' following a review of credit enhancement and impending liquidity problems.

There's no doubt that the spread environment in Mexico has turned harsher, but sagging interest rates are mitigating much of the sting of the steeper spreads.

With the current volatile environment, surveillance has become a key feature in the work of collateral managers and investors alike. In this vein, Deloitte & Touche - which has previously come out with the ABCP, ABS and CDO Suite products as part of its Securitization Office family of solutions - has released Surveillance Suite, which is a customized tool to help users track their portfolios.

The British Airport Authority (BAA), which is owned by Grupo Ferrovial, said it is considering a combination of bank and bond financing.

Nine is so passe, at least if you track secondary loan trades. Markit launched the LCDX Series 10 index last week, and like its predecessor, the Series 9, it will track 100 issues trading in the secondary market. At midday Tuesday, the Series 10 reached 97.07, with a spread of 404.4 basis points. A week prior, the Series 9 index stood at 93.98, with a spread of 398.01 basis points. This is the first time since Oct. 23 that the LCDX has topped 97.

Just as one segment of the student loan ABS sector seemed to get a lifeline from federal authorities, the private side of the market took another hit. Last week, The Education Resources Institute. (TERI), filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after a downgrade from Moody's Investors Service tripped a trigger on a loan contract that resulted in the company having to post cash to cover its student loan guarantees.

Credit card delinquency and charge-off rates continued their upward climb on a sequential and year-over-year basis in January, according to the latest data gleaned by Moody's Investors Service.

As things fall apart at MBS and CDO operations throughout the securitization industry - creating a void in financial services - small teams of executives have begun to regroup as hedge and distressed-asset funds to start picking up the pieces.

For more than nine months, the market has been attempting to sort through the tangled web of counterparty risk that has entrapped Wall Street.

When the subprime RMBS and HEL markets began to fall apart, the market watched as billions in mezzanine CDO liquidations routed spreads, undermined investor confidence and siphoned liquidity from the securitization markets.

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

Credit Suisse is splliting the management of its global securities division among four executives after Michael Ryan, the former sole head of the unit left the bank, according to Financial News. Gael de Boissard, Tony Ehinger, Steve Kantor and Jonathan McHardy will now be the heads of global securities and report to Paul Calello, head of the Credit Suisse's investment bank.

The Royal Bank of Scotland is set to slash 200 staff in its global banking and markets businesses this week as a response to the global economic credit crunch. The bank said the elimination of jobs is not driven by the cost cutting program that has been initiated after its ABN Amro acquisition last year.

Markit has purchased NTC Economics, which offers global macro-economic indicators and owner of the Purchasing Manager’s Index (PMI) series.

Moody's Investors Service has placed under review for possible downgrade the ratings of 93 notes in 12 National Collegiate Student Loan Trust transactions. The actions follow Monday's bankruptcy filing of The Education Resources Institute (TERI). Moody's downgraded TERI's rating on Tuesday to 'Ca' from 'B2.'

The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) and the American Securitization Forum (ASF) offered comments today on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors’ Proposed Rule to Amend the Home Mortgage Provisions of Regulation Z.