At the ABS Vegas conference the deal agent concept was touted by Monique Rollins, deputy assistant secretary at the Treasury Department, as a significant structural reform for the non-agency MBS market.
Ocwen continues to face regulatory issues, including constraints on growth via acquisitions. However, Fitch recently upgraded a number of the firm’s servicer ratings from a level 4 to a level 3-minus with a “stable” outlook.
As IMFnews went to press Monday, investors were once again punishing the stock, with shares trading down 20 percent on the day to $4.95. Its all-time high is $60 a share.
Ditech increased its servicing portfolio to $266.7 billion from $265.4 billion in 3Q, and said it is pursuing “potential business opportunities,” including plans to pursue more subservicing contracts.
“This was really gnarly and political,” said Redwood executive Marty Hughes. “I think the FHFA making this decision was just something that they wanted to get behind them.”
A handful of recent and current U.S., European and international regulatory efforts “pose a serious threat to securitization as a critical source of funding for the real economy,” especially when taken together, a top securitization official told lawmakers in Washington, DC, this week. Testifying before the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets and Government-Sponsored Enterprises, Richard Johns, executive director of the Structured Finance Industry Group, took on a handful of the industry’s most problematic regulatory initiatives. Among them were the liquidity ratio rules that U.S. regulators implemented in late 2014, and the new Basel III capital rules that were adopted by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. He also addressed...