Securitization

Mexico’s Group Zapata, under its holding company Taenza, recently closed a Ps300 million ($22.9 million), two-year securitization of trade receivables.

Markit, an information services company, has agreed to acquire ACBS ClearPar from Fidelity National Information Services and said it will add the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.(DTCC) Loan/SERV Messaging Service to its electronic loan settlement platform.

The Royal Bank of Scotland has added Paul Feidelson, the former head of the investment and product platform for Barclays, to its global banking and markets group to head its commercial paper unit in the Americas.

Independent mortgage banking firms saw their origination profits increase 28% to $1,358 per loan in the second quarter thanks to rising loan volumes, in particular a swell in refinancings.

The 12 Federal Home Loan banks posted a net loss of $165 million during the third quarter, the system's Office of Finance said Friday.

The House and Senate approved a measure late Thursday that would let the government-sponsored enterprises buy or guarantee larger loans for one more year.

Manager Activity: Autos Book Runner Amount (US$ Mil) Rank Mkt.

Michael Brennan, co-founder and former president and CEO of First Industrial Realty Trust, has formed Brennan Investment Group (BIG), a new Chicago-based industrial real estate investment firm.

The House and Senate moved quickly to pass an extension of the $729,750 GSE loan limit through the end of 2010, hoping to avoid any potential disruption in the mortgage market.

Two rating agencies, separately, plan to change their criteria that affect RMBS, paving the way for possible further downgrades.

CIT Group announced that it has reached an agreement with activist investor Carl Icahn that will provide a $1 billion line of credit to the troubled New York-based finance company.

French bank BNP Paribas is on a hiring spree as it seeks to grow its U.S. fixed income group by as many as 70 professionals over the next 18 months, a bank representative confirmed. Most of the new hires will be in sales.

On October 7, the Reserve Bank of Australia bumped up the benchmark cash rate by 25 basis points to 3.25%, signaling a turnaround in policy since the monetary authority began cutting the rate in September 2008 from 7.25%.

The financial crisis of the last couple of years has brought to the fore the shortcomings of the major credit rating agencies.

Things were rosier at last week's ABS East gathering. For one, attendance was up 33% versus last year, according to Information Management Network figures.

When Tishman Speyer Properties and BlackRock Realty acquired Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village on Manhattan's lower East Side for $5.4 billion three years ago, it was billed as a marquee property purchase. But a recent New York Court of Appeals ruling against the developers threatens to unravel the deal and further roil a fragile commercial real estate finance market.

Securitization and its players have started to emerge from the black hole the market was in at last year's gathering. In 2008, the attendees at this event were worried about the possible end of securitization. Everyone was so downtrodden that it almost seemed like there would never be another ABS East conference.

Life settlement securitizations have picked up some renewed interest in recent weeks, and the sector is better placed than ever to live up to its volume potential. However, it still needs to get a few things in order for it to really take off.

Ever since the credit drought set in, loan market participants have been wondering when a new CLO would fall from the sky. There have been a number of predictions regarding CLO activity over the past year or so, but only a few have actually materialized. However, now that conditions have improved, some market participants think a CLO storm cloud is just over the horizon, and they expect to see new CLOs in another six months or so.

Last year, RMBS issuance in major markets of the U.S. and Europe plunged due to either sickly collateral, skittish investors or a combination of both. Colombia, meanwhile, put out a record volume of Ps1.6 trillion ($834 million) in RMBS domestically.