“In a normal [commercial] bank acquisition, senior managers usually get a big payday,” said former FHLBank Chicago President Alex Pollock. “But in this case, if you merge [with another FHLB] you could lose your job.”
The rating service said investors should have access to the reviewer’s findings or access to other information that would help determine if a breach should be pursued.
Leading Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee this week launched an ambitious effort to draft a bipartisan housing-finance reform bill, and possibly approve it by year end. Several lawmakers from both sides of the aisle cited a growing consensus about how that reform should be undertaken, with most agreeing on the preservation of the to-be-announced market and the need for an explicit government guarantee for MBS backed by conventional mortgages. Committee Chairman Mike Crapo, R-ID, listed...
Communication among investors in non-agency MBS looks to be increasingly important. Fitch Ratings has included an assessment of a deal’s bondholder communication platform in revised criteria for residential MBS while the Structured Finance Industry Group continues to work on recommendations for bondholder communication. “Fitch views the inclusion of a bondholder communication platform as a best practice for rep-and-warrant frameworks, particularly in transactions that rely on bondholder votes to influence rep-and-warrant review decisions,” the rating service said. Fitch said...
The Federal Housing Finance Agency this week held a one-day workshop on the single-family rental market, a sector in which Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could become bigger players depending on how much their regulator allows them to do. According to industry officials, both government-sponsored enterprises have proposals pending with the agency for financing single-family rental operators. The FHFA, Fannie and Freddie all declined to comment on what’s in those proposals. According to an agenda of the meeting provided to Inside MBS & ABS, speakers at the workshop included...
Less than $1 million separated Fitch Ratings and DBRS in the ranking of top rating agencies serving the non-agency MBS market in the first quarter of 2017, a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis reveals. Fitch was on top, although both companies had equal shares (36.5 percent) of the market. Kroll Bond Rating (21.7 percent) and Moody’s Investors Services (17.5 percent) ranked third and fourth. S&P Global was the least active rater of non-agency MBS with just an 11.5 percent share. A significant share of non-agency MBS are issued...[Includes two data tables]
The Structured Finance Industry Group called for an appeals court to enforce industry-established payment priority provisions in a significant case involving Lehman Brothers’ collateralized-debt obligations and a bankruptcy filing. Lehman Brothers Special Financing Inc. v. Bank of America N.A. centers on a “flip clause” included in 44 CDOs issued by the failed investment bank. SFIG noted that a flip clause redirects or reprioritizes cash flow upon bankruptcy, and is often incorporated in securitizations that include swaps. “As is common in the market, in structuring these transactions, the parties bargained...