Securitization

The Mortgage Bankers Association appointed Jay Brinkmann as its chief economist and senior vice president for research and economics.

Guy Carpenter Co. has hired Cory Anger as head of global structuring for GC Securities, Guy Carpenter’s investment banking arm and a division of MMC Securities Corp. The new hire reports to David Priebe, head of the firm's global client development group.

After growing between $21 billion and $33 billion from April through June with annualized growth rates of 33% to 53%, Freddie Mac's retained portfolio increased just $6 billion, or 9.8%. Net retained commitments were essentially nil (negative $0.3 billion).

The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) reported home prices based on their seasonally-adjusted purchase-only index declined 1.36% in the second quarter (5.44% annualized) following a 1.68% decline (6.72% annualized) in the first quarter.

The rise in delinquencies for the ABX indices was not surprising based on the roll rates and the 30-59 and 60-89 day delinquency pipelines. The 30-59 day delinquency bucket appears to be leveling off across each index. Prepayments also remained slow across all series.According to a Merrill Lynch report, prepays have slowed considerably from historical levels over the last few years. Analysts said that considering the limited refinancing opportunities available, they are commensurate with the environment. For example, according to Merrill, the 07-2 deals show 18% one- month CPR (voluntary plus involuntary) at 19 WALA, compared with 25% for their 06-1 counterparts at the same WALA. In a related report, UBS said that the 30-day DQ bucket, which they consider the leading indicator of ultimate defaults, restarted its upward trend after several months of mixed behaviour in which some indices were up while many others were down. As analysts pointed out in several earlier reports, 30-day delinquencies have a very strong seasonal component and because of that we expected to see rise in the summer months. The increases in other DQ buckets also support our

Mark Daly, Steve O’Connell and Guido van der Ven, previously senior vice presidents in Sallie Mae’s corporate finance department, have formed their new company called Education Investment Group (EIG).

The National Association of Realtors said that existing home sales bounced back to 5 million units annualized in July, a retraction from the entire June dip, which looks to have been more noise than substance.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s (FDIC) Indymac systemic loan modification plan could have a widespread impact on bond holders, according to a recent report from Barclays Capital.

Citigroup plans to revamp its capital markets business under its investment-banking arm.

Fitch Ratings presents its asset-level projected loss analysis (PLA) to quantify loss expectations on structured finance (SF) CDOs.

The market is grossly mispricing heavily defeased CMBS, although it is true that the illiquidity and weak technicals make it difficult to trumpet relative value in the current

Recent selling has pushed many non-agency MBS yields, particularly in subprime and option ARM, to acceptable and even attractive levels, a recent Merill Lynch report said.

Baker & McKenzie advised Citi Microfinance on its five year contract with AT Microloans I, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of ACCION Texas, to buy up to $30 million in microenterprise loans, a first for the U.S. microfinance industry.

Lehman Brothers heads of mortgage origination and securitization are leaving the firm, according to published news reports.

Standard & Poor's yesterday lowered its ratings on 49 tranches from 11 U.S. cash flow and hybrid CDO deals.

Mortgage rates were mostly lower this week according to Freddie Mac's weekly survey.

The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) appointed Michael Paese as executive vice president, global advocacy, with responsibility for association's global legal, governmental, and legislative affairs and advocacy initiatives.

DebtX sold more than $292 million in nonperforming residential real estate loans. The portfolio will be offered in 19 separate pools and will bid on Sept. 18.

As the GSEs struggle to preserve capital and indicate that they are not likely to be growing their portfolios, the Federal Home Loan Banks' (FHLB) agency portfolio growth has remained strong, Lehman Brothers said in a recent report.

GSI Securitization acquired ARGYLE Solutions, which is a technology-driven healthcare revenue cycle management firm.