Partly to comply with liquidity cover ratio requirements imposed in the wake of the financial crisis, U.S. banks ramped up their holdings of high-quality liquid assets. But once they got compliant, many of them shifted their asset allocations more to agency MBS and U.S. Treasuries, according to researchers at the Federal Reserve. This could have implications for the U.S. central bank’s massive balance sheet over the long haul, they added. As of Jan. 1, 2015, large banks in the U.S. have needed...
A former employee of Standard & Poor’s Rating Services beat fraud charges alleging she loosened S&P’s rating methodology for commercial MBS to generate business for her employer. However, she was found liable of the lesser charge of negligence for failing to disclose the change. In his initial Aug. 29 decision, Administrative Law Judge James Grimes of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s administrative court said that while Barbara Duka did change the firm’s rating methodology for CMBS, he found no evidence that she intended to manipulate, deceive or defraud investors. Rather, Duka, manager of S&P’s CMBS rating group, did...
Mortgage lenders harvested a landmark crop of purchase-money mortgages during the second quarter, fueled partly by continuing growth in the first-time buyer segment, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside Mortgage Finance. An estimated $307.0 billion of purchase loans were originated in the second quarter, up a stunning 49.8 percent from the first three months of the year. That was the highest quarterly volume for purchase-mortgage lending since the third quarter of 2006. Purchase loans accounted for 67.5 percent of the estimated $455.0 billion in first-lien mortgage originations during the April-June cycle, the highest such share since at least 2003. First-time buyers contributed...[Includes three data tables]
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