Ohio Court Sides With Freddie in Pre-Crisis Shareholder Lawsuit. An Ohio federal court late last week tossed out a shareholder class action lawsuit that accused Freddie Mac of lying about its exposure to subprime loans prior to the 2008 financial crisis. The suit, filed in 2008 by the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System, claimed that Freddie artificially inflated the value of its common stock by making false public financial statements that obscured its subprime exposure.OPERS claimed it lost as much as $27.2 million as a result of Freddie’s alleged cover-up of its subprime exposure.
Wells Fargo is in discussions with the Department of Justice about a possible resolution of alleged improper origination and servicing of FHA loans that resulted in huge paid claims and significant losses to the agency’s Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund. The ongoing talks are related to a complaint filed by the government in federal district court in Manhattan on Oct. 9, 2012, alleging, among other things, that Wells Fargo improperly certified FHA mortgages between 2001 and 2010 for insurance even though it knew the underwriting was flawed. The complaint said that the bank’s insurance claims should not have been paid when some of the loans later defaulted. It further alleged that Wells Fargo did not disclose the loans’ deficiencies to the FHA before making insurance claims. On Dec. 1, 2012, Wells Fargo filed...
Although residential lenders are coming off a better than expected production quarter – and enjoying a decent last three months of the year – analysts and investors seem undecided on whether there’s opportunity in the market or it’s time to stay on the sidelines. Several high profile publicly traded shops that are considered “high touch” specialists – Nationstar Mortgage, Ocwen Financial and Walter Investment – continue to trade at steep discounts to their 52-week highs with all three facing possible class-action lawsuits from angry investors who’ve seen billions of dollars in stock equity evaporate over the past year. And then there’s...
Although Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reported combined comprehensive income of $6.8 billion in the third quarter of 2014 – thanks in no small part to strong guaranty fee revenue – the two government-sponsored enterprises both said they’re keeping a wary eye on the precarious financial condition of private mortgage insurers. Fannie noted in its 10-Q filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that although the financial condition of its primary MI counterparties approved to write new business has improved, there is still risk that they may fail to honor the GSE’s insurance claims. “If we determine that it is probable that we will not collect all of our claims from one or more of these mortgage insurer counterparties, or if we have already made that determination but our estimate of the shortfall increases, it could result...
One key point that much of the mortgage lending industry is contesting in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s proposed amendments to its integrated disclosure final rule is the timing requirement for re-disclosing the loan estimate. The proposal would amend a final rule to integrate disclosures required by the Truth in Lending Act and the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act that itself won’t be implemented until August 2015. The CFPB tried to make the so-called TRID more workable by giving lenders more time to revise loan estimate disclosures. Revisions based only on changes in rates would have to be made by the next business day after the rate locks, instead of on the same day, which is the current requirement. A number of lender representatives told...
RSS