Securitization

As credit card portfolio health continues to improve and consumer spending gradually picks up, receivables are poised to grow next year for the first time since the financial crisis, Moody's Investors Service said Wednesday.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) finalized three rules on Wednesday, including one that requires Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to reduce the size of their portfolios.

Residential foreclosures have been rising for the past six months and will continue to accelerate in 2011, according to CoreLogic analysts.

CoreLogic, as part of its plan to concentrate on its real estate and mortgage information businesses, will sell its employer services and litigation support businesses to Symphony Technology Group.

Moody’s Investors Service has downgraded $1.7 billion in Washington Mutual-issued securities backed by first-lien, Alt-A credit, payment-option adjustable-rate mortgages with negative amortization.

Pramerica Investment Management is assuming management of a CLO previously overseen by Aladdin Capital Management UK, according to a Moody’s Investors Service report.

Standard & Poor’s downgraded MBIA and its two principal bond insurer subsidiaries on Wednesday, citing new methodologies for assessing RMBS.

Standard & Poor’s downgraded MBIA and its two principal bond insurer subsidiaries on Wednesday, citing new methodologies for assessing RMBS.

The Mortgage Bankers Association's (MBA) weekly mortgage applications survey for the week ending Dec. 17 showed that the market composite index dropped 18.6% on a seasonally adjusted basis from one week earlier.

Mortgage bankers originated $26.4 billion of Federal Housing Administration (FHA)-backed loans in November, an 8.2% jump from the prior month, but delinquencies jumped as well.

Sales of existing single-family homes jumped 6.7% in November after falling 2% in October, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR).

Resource America's subsidiary Resource Europe Management sold the management contract of Resource Europe CLO I B.V., a €300 million ($392.74 million) CLO. The sale was made to an affiliate of Intermediate Capital Group (ICG).

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo filed a lawsuit against Ernst & Young (E&Y) charging the accounting firm with helping Lehman Brothers Holdings engage in accounting fraud, masking the true state of its balance sheet.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bought nearly 400,000 refinanced loans in the third quarter, an 82% spike from the second quarter, according to data released Tuesday by their regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA).

The government's Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) finally gained momentum in November with servicers completing 30,000 permanent loan restructurings, a 15% rise from October.

If the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) has its way, federal regulators would not wait for Congress to create national servicing standards, but instead write such rules as part of risk retention guidelines set to be released soon.

Moody's Investors Service today took actions on 35 transactions of payments owed to the issuers pursuant to the Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) between the domestic tobacco manufacturers and the 46 states and certain territories party thereto.

With Toronto-Dominion Bank's $6.3 billion agreement to buy Chrysler Financial from the private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management, the Toronto banking giant is betting that demand for auto loans will pick up as the economy rebounds.

Perella Weinberg Partners named six new partners. The partners have all been promoted to partner from managing director and are based in New York and London.

Wells Fargo & Co. on Monday agreed to modify more than $2 billion of risky payment option ARMs from two lenders that the mega bank bought during the last years of the decade: World Savings of Oakland, and Wachovia Corp. of Charlotte.