Securitization

Markit, a financial information services company, will release a family of sovereign credit default swap (CDS) indices that will track investor perceptions of the credit risk of a range of countries around the world.

The default rate on prime loans backing private-label securities jumped 214 basis points from April to 8.8% in May, according a report by Five Bridges Advisors.

Standard & Poor's has placed more than 1,000 U.S. conduit and fusion commercial mortgage-backed securities deals on "watch negative."

Though Barack Obama pointed to the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 during his presidential campaign as a source of the financial crisis, his administration's proposal for regulatory reform would expand a key part of the law that gave the Federal Reserve Board "umbrella supervisory" powers.

The federal bank and thrift agencies Friday clarified the capital treatment of mortgage loans modified under the administration's plan to reduce foreclosures.

Standard & Poor's published refined methodologies and assumptions it uses to rate U.S. conduit or conduit/fusion CMBS transactions.

The U.K.'s Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) released some updated forecasts on the U.K. economy for 2009.

UBS has greatly mitigated its exposure to problem mortgage assets through an arrangement with the Swiss National Bank and said its second quarter will look better than its first, but it still is anticipating a loss for the period.

Two Congressmen have introduced legislation that would place an 18-month moratorium on the Home Mortgage Valuation Code of Conduct (HVCC), a Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac edict that — among other things — bans loan brokers and loan officers from directly ordering appraisals.

Despite signs the economy is recovering, the Federal Reserve Board announced Thursday it would keep several liquidity facilities in place into early 2010, while allowing other programs to expire.

Auctions of Treasury securities usually aren’t anything special for dealer firms on Wall Street, but this week’s sale of roughly $40 billion worth of two-year paper for the U.S. government was something more meaningful for Jefferies & Co.

June remittance data, which reflect May activity, showed prepayments dropping further inspite of the lower mortgage rates and loss severities trending lower after rising the previous month, according to a report from Bank of America/ Merrill Lynch analysts.

A gigantic RMBS priced today in Mexico, originated by the fund for government agency Instituto de Seguridad y Servicios Sociales de los Trabajadores del Estado.

Vertical Capital Solutions (VCAP Solutions), in partnership with Vertical Capital, launched a valuation and advisory business providing a wide range of services to clients, Vertical Capital said in a release.

The International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) emerging markets committee (EMC) has published a consultation report titled Impact on and Responses of Emerging Markets to the Financial Crisis.

New York-based financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald has expanded it is London office and will hire as many as 100 new investment bankers, traders and other staff as it nearly doubles its size in the U.K., according to several reports.

Freddie Survey Shows Small Rate Increase

Recovery in the economy as a whole appears likely to continue in the second half of this year but parts of the U.S. housing market may remain bogged by roughly 4 million foreclosed or seriously delinquent properties concentrated in certain states, Barclays researchers said as part of a global outlook press briefing in New York.

The Federal Housing Administration insured $27.3 billion in single-family mortgages in April — up 8% from the previous month due to higher mortgage purchase volume.

Standard & Poor’s published its first monthly European ABCP surveillance snapshot, the rating agency said in a release.