After a two-year rollercoaster ride through the court system that ended in 2015, a former Wall Street trader finds himself facing another trial in an MBS fraud case. Jess Litvak, a former bond trader with the Jeffries Group, will go on trial again after a jury found him guilty in 2014 of violating securities laws. He was accused of fraud and misleading investors about the price he had paid for residential MBS. According to attorneys with the law firm of Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas in Houston, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Connecticut originally brought...

The jumbo mortgage-backed security Redwood Trust is set to issue on Jan. 20 received improved pricing compared with the company’s previous deal issued in October. The new MBS is fairly similar to the prior bond, indicating stronger demand from investors. The $343.28 million Sequoia Mortgage Trust 2017-1 priced last week. The super-senior tranche priced 1-20 back of Fannie 3.5s, which was four ticks tighter than Redwood’s previous offering, according to an analysis by Wells Fargo Securities ...

Large swaths of investors will continue to avoid buying non-agency mortgage-backed securities unless Congress passes investor-friendly reforms, according to Chris Katopis, executive director of the Association of Mortgage Investors. “Private capital has virtually left the U.S. mortgage market,” he said. “The future is likely to reflect a similar situation unless Congress helps establish the necessary systems, structures and standards for private capital to return.” In a recent study published by ...

Judge William Pauley of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York has approved a $335 million settlement by Bank of America with three pension funds and other investors to resolve a securities class-action against the bank. The settlement is one of the largest class-action settlements of securities-purchase claims arising from the financial crisis, according to the Pennsylvania Public School Employees’ Retirement System (PSERS), the court appointed lead plaintiff in the six-year old case. Other investors include...

The incoming Trump administration has yet to pick a new president for Ginnie Mae, but foreign investors will be keeping a close eye on the selection for the simple reason they own a ton of the agency’s MBS. According to Sept. 30 figures provided to Inside MBS & ABS, foreign investment in Ginnie MBS is now at a record $552 billion, or roughly 35 percent of all outstanding securities. The agency could not provide...

Two Wall Street banks have agreed to separate settlements with the Department of Justice to resolve civil claims related to their issuance and underwriting of nonprime residential MBS leading up to the financial crisis. Under the terms of the settlements, Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank have agreed to pay the DOJ $2.48 billion and $3.1 billion, respectively, related to the securitization, underwriting and issuance of residential MBS prior to 2008. In addition, Credit Suisse ($2.8 billion) and Deutsche Bank ($4.1 billion) will provide...

Issuance of prime non-agency mortgage-backed securities fell sharply during 2016 from already low issuance levels, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside Nonconforming Markets. Forecasts for issuance this year are largely subdued, with some industry analysts noting that the prime non-agency MBS market is “in limbo.” Some $9.32 billion in prime non-agency MBS were issued in 2016, a 22.8 percent decline from the previous year. Issuance volume ... [Includes one data chart]

A number of large investors that purchased non-agency mortgage-backed securities before the financial crisis have indicated that they won’t be willing to invest in new issuance until issuers standardize representations and warranties. “Investors have lost confidence in the architecture of this market,” an investor said in December at the Structured Finance Industry Group’s RMBS Symposium, which was produced by Information Management Network. The investor was frustrated ...

Ginnie Mae guaranteed a total of $507.46 billion of single-family mortgage-backed securities in 2016, its biggest annual volume ever, according to a new analysis and ranking by Inside FHA/VA Lending. That was up 16.4 percent from the agency’s previous record of $435.80 billion set in 2015. (Those figures include MBS backed by FHA home-equity conversion mortgages, which are not included in the table below or in the rankings on pages 3-5.) In 2016, Ginnie guaranteed $497.03 billion of MBS backed by traditional forward mortgages, also a record, which was up 16.9 percent from the previous year. The biggest factor in last year’s record-setting production was the boom in VA lending, particularly VA refinance loans. Issuers securitized a record $203.03 billion of VA loans last year, up 33.0 percent from the 2015 total. Some 54.3 percent of those loans were refinance transactions. Total VA refi loan ... [4 charts]

In the past few years, efforts facilitated by the Treasury Department and the Structured Finance Industry Group have helped develop standards for a deal agent in non-agency MBS. The concept took a major step forward last week when SFIG published a draft deal-agent agreement. However, the agreement didn’t delve into the specifics about how a deal agent would be compensated and industry participants have a wide range of opinions on the issue. A lawyer involved with the creation of the deal agent standards said...