Securitization

The Carlyle Group said today it recently added $1 billion in new CLO assets under management.

Highland Capital Management has been appointed the manager of a $243 million CLO previously managed by CypressTree Investment Management.

The Refinance Index surged 30.4% to ~3630.5 for the week ending Aug. 5 as the 30-year average contract interest rate declined eight basis points to 4.37%.

In an unusual — and sure-to-be-humbling — move, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan will submit to a public grilling by a big investor on Wednesday. Hedge fund manager Bruce Berkowitz will host a 90 minute conference call with Moynihan starting at 1 p.m. EST — and he wants your "toughest questions" for Moynihan, whose troubled company's shares have fallen almost 50% this year.Berkowitz, founder of Fairholme Capital Management, said last week that the "purpose of the call is to better understand how Bank of America is navigating the economic environment." He invited skeptics to participate on the call. ASR sister publication American Banker took him at his word and sent along the list below.

The National Association of Independent Housing Professionals (NAIHP) said it has a meeting scheduled for Tuesday with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) to discuss the issue of loan buyback claims being forced upon mortgage brokers.

Many more servicers are using deficiency judgments to recoup losses, DBRS analysts said.

Fannie Mae, in a new quarterly filing, said it is receiving "higher amounts" from lenders on loan repurchase requests while its pipeline of buyback claims on defaulted mortgages continues to grow.

As the stock prices of the big banks cratered on Monday, particularly for Bank of America, pundits and industry observers began worrying that a second financial crisis was in the offing, including the possibility of the failure of a large financial institution.

Fitch Ratings intends to have expanded disclosure of representations, warranties and enforcement mechanisms in its global structured finance rating reports starting Sept. 26.

CMBS issuance could edge up in the short run, as predicted by a recent spike in origination, Standard & Poor's said in a release. CMBS conduits origination soared 638% in Q2 year-on-year, and jumped 210% from Q1, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Assocation released last week. There is a caveat though: recent reports suggest that lending has tanked.

A gauge of CMBS tenant risk in the U.S. has scarcely been nicked by the U.S. downgrade, according to Standard & Poor's.

GSO Capital Partners, the credit arm of private equity firm The Blackstone Group, has priced a $369 million collateralized loan obligation.

SNR Denton hired Scott Samlin as a partner in the capital markets practice. Samlin was previously at Morgan Stanley where he was the executive director for the residential mortgage and lending compliance business. He will be based in New York.

CIT Group has appointed Nelson J. Chai as president, the company said today.

Ares Management is expanding its presence in the European CLO market.

In 2Q11, the quality of the loans backing CMBS conduits held steady in terms of leverage, although there are already signs of more aggressive underwriting, Moody's Investors Service said in a report released today on its quarterly review.

Insurance-linked securitizations (ILS) are holding up even in the aftermath of the major natural disasters that hit during early 2011, said Standard & Poor’s in a release.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers, aided by banking and housing groups, are beginning a strong lobbying push to forestall a scheduled drop in the maximum sizes of mortgages backed by the GSEs.

Although Bank of America entered into a $2.8 billion buyback settlement with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac late last year, it is looking at additional repurchase claims regarding the two GSEs, according to a new filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury fell to 2.35% Monday morning, nearing its all-time low as stocks sold off in the wake of Standard & Poor's historic debt downgrade on the U.S.