Emerging markets

Founded in 1966, the Asian Development Bank has a mandate to reduce the poverty of its developing member countries (DMCs) and improve the quality of life of their people. It currently has 67 members. Those eligible for assistance must be DMCs and be located in the region under ADB's purview, which includes areas of the Pacific as well as Asia. In 2009, the bank disbursed $13.2 billion in loans, $1.1 billion in grants and $267.2 million in technical assistance.

Emerging market players in the structured finance world might soon have a new platform to develop mortgage covered bonds: Peru. Legislation on this product is currently before the Peruvian congress and is piquing the interest of foreign and domestic ABS devotees alike.

While the FDIC prepares to take away the Safe Harbor privileges from ABS issuers, it has reaped the rewards of securitization by coming to market with three structured note offerings over the last month.

For the last several years, Brazil's main real estate ABS security, the CRI, has often looked like the poor cousin to the FIDC, a popular vehicle that has proved a good fit for a wide range of assets, even real estate.

The 8.8-magnitude earthquake that shook a long swath of Chile on Feb. 27 left damage that could work its way into ABS deals, sources said. The most vulnerable asset class is related to real estate, including deals backed by residential mortgages and lease-to-own contracts, but there are safeguards that should help transactions avoid serious deterioration.

With new accounting rules, regulatory uncertainty, and wary investors making ABS uneconomical for issuers, pockets of the securitization market are paralyzed. Participants are forced to look at alternative funding sources, which Nora Colomer explores in this month's cover story.