Securitization

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) fined Jefferies & Co. $1.5 million for failing to disclose that it was earning additional compensation when selling new-issue auction-rate securities to clients.

The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) reacted to the House Financial Services Committee hearing titled Understanding the Implications and Consequences of the Proposed Rule on Risk Retention.

Deerfield Capital Corp. and CIFC have closed their merger. The new firm will now be called CIFC Deerfield Corp.

JPMorgan Chase plans to sell a $1.5 billion B-piece offering to Torchlight Investors, according to a Bloomberg report.

The increase in appetite for esoteric ABS hasn't been solely for on-the-run assets, the market is increasingly looking at off-the-run assets that often require more work to get done.

The banking consent agreements signed by some of the nation's largest residential servicers on Wednesday require the firms to stop the practice of "dual tracking" where at risk homeowners start the loan modification process but also are officially put into a parallel foreclosure pipeline.

MountainView Capital Holdings, Denver, hired Robert Wellerstein as a managing director in the firm's mortgage and fixed-income sales and trading units.

Moody's Investors Service said today in its U.S. ABS conference that the economic overview looks great with a forecast for strong growth in 2011.

Cantor Commercial Real Estate (CCRE) is in the market with its very first CMBS worth a little more than $634.5 million.

An enforcement action against a bank is almost always bad news for the institution involved.

A mortgage that is more than 60 days late might seem like an automatic disqualification for inclusion into a government-backed security. However, until last week, servicers were able to pool such loans into securities backed by the Ginnie Mae.

Sales of distressed properties could pull home prices down by another 10%, according to CoreLogic chief economist Mark Fleming.

The European Central Bank (ECB) raised interest rates for the first time in almost three years last week. It is a widely anticipated quarter-point rate increase to 1.25% and is likely to be followed by consecutive increases this year.

Mortgage originations at JPMorgan Chase (JPM) dropped 29% since the end of 2010, kicking off a year where industrywide originations are projected to drop below $1 trillion.

Federal banking regulators Wednesday afternoon dropped their regulatory "bomb" on the nation's largest residential servicers — and two of their top outside vendors — accusing the firms of a "pattern of negligence and misconduct" tied to the processing of loans.

Enterprise is marketing a $750 million rental fleet ABS. The capital structure includes one $750 million tranche of floating rate variable funding asset-backed notes with a final payment date October 3, 2017. The offering has been rated 'Aaasf' by Moody's Investors Service.

Mortgage application activity declined 6.7% for the week ending April 8 as mortgage rates inched higher.

The investment banking firm Sandler O’Neill & Partners added a team of five sales professionals to its Chicago-based, fixed-income group.

Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller blasted a study Tuesday that said proposed servicer settlement terms could cost the economy $10 billion a year. Miller, who is leading the settlement on behalf of the attorneys general, said the study was "grossly inaccurate," and noted it was paid for by the financial services industry, including some of the servicers involved in talks with the AGs.

A year ago, the folks who worked in Freddie Mac's multi-family section were sitting around waiting for the phones to ring. Now they can't keep up.