The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. late last week filed separate lawsuits against a number of companies that issued or underwrote non-agency MBS purchased by Citizens National Bank and Strategic Capital Bank, two Illinois banks that failed in May 2009. The two banks purchased some $140.5 million of non-agency MBS issued by Bear Stearns, Citicorp, Credit Suisse and Merrill Lynch. The lawsuits also name JPMorgan Securities, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Ally Securities, HSBC Securities, RBS Securities and UBS Securities as underwriters of these transactions. The FDIC is seeking $77.0...

Collateralized loan obligations and the securitization of esoteric ABS are gaining momentum in a market that is still missing one of the key ingredients of the boom years – non-agency residential mortgages – according to experts at the American Securitization Forum annual meeting this week. When Sara Bonesteel, managing director and head of alternative investments at Prudential Fixed Income, described the appeal of CLOs, she may as well have been outlining the antithesis of the current RMBS market. The CLO sector has fewer regulatory issues, relatively strong performance in the underlying asset and the...

Most of the non-mortgage securitization market seems to be approaching the more normal levels that were seen prior to the financial crisis, according to market participants, analysts and observers gathered for the annual meeting of the American Securitization Forum this week in Washington, DC. “We’ve come a pretty long way, if you think about 2008, pre-2008 and post-crisis,” said Bob Behal, principal with The Vanguard Group. He noted that there have been healthy pricing levels in auto loan and credit card ABS and more active student loan and container sectors, as well as some interesting niche products and...

With banks under increased pressure to manage their exposure to risks related to mortgage-backed securities and whole loans, Moody’s Analytics has updated its risk and capital allocation tool so clients can run their mortgage portfolio under various stressed scenarios and get a better handle on potential losses. The latest iteration of the Mortgage Portfolio Analyzer features an enhanced framework for modeling stressed macroeconomic scenarios, defaults, prepayments and severities. The tool that the firm has put together can “simultaneously benefit institutions that have portfolios of not...

Look for the Federal Housing Finance Agency to press its multiple legal actions against many of the nation’s biggest issuers of non-agency mortgage-backed securities after a federal judge rejected a bid by UBS Americas to turn back the FHFA’s lawsuit over its sale of non-agency MBS to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Judge Denise Cote, of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, two weeks ago denied UBS’ motion to dismiss on statute of limitations grounds, while dismissing the FHFA’s negligent misrepresentation claims. The FHFA, as GSE conservator, sued UBS in July 2011 alleging that billions of dollars of MBS purchased by Fannie and Freddie were based on offering documents that contained “materially false statements and omissions.”

Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac held onto their ample shares of mortgage-backed securities with something of a bump during the first quarter of 2012, according to a new Inside The GSEs analysis. The GSEs issued a combined $303.9 billion in MBS during the first quarter, a 13.9 percent increase from the fourth quarter of 2011. Compared to the first quarter of last year, Fannie and Freddie saw a 16.4 percent increase in MBS issuance. Between the two companies, Fannie and Freddie registered a plentiful 77.9 percent share of new MBS during the period that ended March 31, 2012, up from 77.1 percent the two companies held during the fourth quarter of 2011 and much farther apart from the 74.8 percent both GSEs held during the first quarter of 2011.

A panel of federal regulators told members of the House Financial Services Committee this week that enforcement of securities violations would be greatly hampered if the government was compelled to seek admissions of wrongdoing or liability as a condition of settlement. Committee Chairman Spencer Bachus, R-AL, said the purpose of the hearing was to examine the settlement practices of federal financial regulators, in particular the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC has come under public scrutiny after a federal judge last fall rejected the terms of an SEC settlement in lieu of trial that...

Converting real estate owned properties to rental units is still in its infancy but it could be a compelling asset type for investors. If securitized, it could provide a much-needed boost to the real estate market, according to Standard & Poor’s. In a recent analysis, S&P suggested taking the government’s REO-to-rent pilot program a step further and consider securitizing the rental streams from a pool of underlying REO assets, which could potentially provide a steady cash flow to back securitization transactions. Proceeds from the eventual sale of the properties could also be incorporated into the cash...

This week, Fitch Ratings downgraded Washington Mutual’s covered bonds to ‘AA-’ from ‘AA’ and placed them on rating watch negative, after last week’s downgrade of the issuer default rating of the program sponsor, JPMorgan Chase Bank. That rating action followed JPMorgan Chase’s disclosure last week of a $2 billion trading loss on its synthetic credit positions in its chief investment office. The positions were intended to hedge JPM's overall credit exposure, particularly during periods of credit stress. That loss estimate has since grown to $3 billion, it was reported this week. The JPMorgan...

The government overseer of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac wants to help trim the footprint of the two government-sponsored enterprises by selling credit risk to private investors, but a top public policy analyst questions how effective such efforts will be in bringing private capital back to residential mortgage markets. “The basic business model of credit-risk insurance doesn’t just make sense,” said Karen Shaw Petrou, managing partner at Federal Financial Analytics, a think-tank in Washington, DC. “Because of the damage done in the run-up to the crisis, traditional insurers are at great risk of being...