Securitization

The debt ceiling compromise will bring some temporary relief to the securitization market, although the benefits will likely be short-lived.

In July, more than $1.3 billion in CMBS conduit loans were resolved with losses, Trepp said today in a report.

The 'on-again/off-again' sale process has started once again for Aurora Loan Services (ALS), the Colorado-based mortgage banking division of Aurora Bank FSB, according to industry officials.

Homeowners who originated their mortgages during the peak of the housing boom with unfavorable loan terms are getting more frustrated with their inability to refinance with mortgage servicers, according to the J.D. Power and Associates 2011 U.S. primary mortgage servicer satisfaction study.

New Hampshire Higher Education Loan Corp. is in the market with a taxable SLABS deal Series 2011-1 worth $522.635 million. The joint lead managers on the 144A transaction are RBC Capital Markets and UBS.

Kroll Bond Rating Agency (KBRA) is currently seeking public comment on five publications that were released today regarding its RMBS rating process. This means that the rating agency can now rate residential mortgage-backed deals.

When Democrats used their majorities in the House and Senate last year to pass a financial overhaul largely along partisan lines, top Republicans were clear about what should happen next.

At the recent American Securitization Forum (ASF) Sunset Seminar, panelists looked back at the first year of Dodd-Frank, saying regulators are still missing the bigger picture.

Europe's reenactment of last summer's sovereign debt crisis heated up as talks of a Greek debt default intensified once again this July.

Greek bailout talks intensified once again this July, a repeat in many ways of last summer's discussions. But structured finance issuance is taking it much harder this year, as Nora Colomer examines in the cover story. In July two actively marketed European securitizations were abruptly pulled when the market got too volatile. Other issuers went the retained route rather than face the risks associated with bringing new-issue deals to market.

I recently completed the book Reckless Endangerment, a widely discussed and heavily promoted perspective on the mortgage and financial crisis. While the book is quite interesting and illuminating at times, it is a poorly written, incomplete and flawed analysis of recent events.

Most market participants believed that Congress was going to raise the debt ceiling before the Aug. 2 deadline. However, it was largely expected that the U.S. long-term debt rating was going to be downgraded from its 'AAA' status by at least one of the two big rating agencies.

Bank regulators expressed frustration July 27 over a little-noticed and initially uncontroversial provision of Dodd-Frank that forces them to eliminate references to credit ratings in most bank regulations.

CMBS 2.0 has taken off and is getting normalized, with even a $685 million deal backed entirely by hotel properties passing muster.

Standard & Poor's has announced, in connection with its advanced notice of proposed criteria change, that it will not be assigning ratings to CMBS transactions that are using its U.S. conduit/fusion criteria.

The bust of Spain's construction boom has left some deep scars on the country's economy. To be sure, the crash has been a prime ingredient of the stubbornly high unemployment rate - currently at 21% - as well as of the mountain of troubled assets held by the country's savings banks, known as cajas.

Last month, Turkey's Sekerbank debuted the country's first covered bond, backed by SME loans as collateral. The TL230 million ($135 million), 8-year final deal was purchased by Dutch Development Bank the FMO, which took a €25-million equivalent tranche; the International Finance Corp. ($25 million) and sole arranger Unicredit (€50 million).

Some investors are wary about the $8.5 billion Bank of America agreed to pay in the MBS-related settlement it worked out with 22 large money managers, but if approved the bank will be giving up more than a one-time cash payout. The settlement imposes requirements on the servicer that appear likely to portend long-term and much broader benefits for investors.

The markets continued to grapple with the impasse in Washington regarding raising the debt ceiling as the clock steadily ticks down to the Aug. 2 deadline, and the prospects of a ratings downgrade increase.

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