Moody’s Investors Service agreed to a $863.79 million settlement with the Department of Justice, 21 states and Washington, DC, late last week. The settlement focused on rating activities between 2004 and 2010 involving residential MBS and collateralized debt obligations. According to the settlement, Moody’s used an internal ratings model for most tranches of certain residential MBS that was more lenient than its published guidelines, allowing for lower credit enhancement levels than what the published guidelines required. The internal model was based...

As a number of shareholder lawsuits against Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac hang in the balance, a new administration offers reasons for some to be optimistic on the cases coming to a close and the Treasury’s sweep of the government-sponsored enterprises’ profits coming to an end. During a Jan. 18 call hosted by Investors Unite, legal experts weighed in on the outlook for GSE shareholder cases just days before the inauguration. Plaintiffs have been arguing that a government bailout of the GSEs and the subsequent Treasury sweep was unnecessary and illegal. “As GSE shareholders, we are...

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...

What once seemed like an idle speculation – the potential ouster of Richard Cordray as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau – suddenly looks more likely. Last week, President-elect Donald Trump met with Randy Neugebauer, the former Texas Republican member of the House Financial Services Committee, who is under consideration as a replacement for Cordray, according to multiple press accounts. Neugebauer reportedly has not been offered the job, as of press time, nor have other candidates been considered for the position. “I heard...

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit last week gave PHH Corp. the green light to weigh in on the legal arguments the Justice Department made late last year in support of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s petition for an en banc rehearing of its dispute with the lender. The appeals court did so over the objections of the CFPB, and with 11 of the 12 judges in agreement and one not participating. PHH had argued that it ought to be able to respond to the second of two government arguments in favor of the review. Privately, some industry insiders thought...

With the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United States now just days away, anxiety among defenders of the CFPB that its director, Richard Cordray, may be booted is intensifying, prompting some of his more vocal supporters to make impassioned public pleas to defend him and preserve the agency he heads. Up on Capitol Hill, Democrats on the House Financial Services Committee urged the new president to “reject the Wall Street agenda” and not remove Cordray from his post. “Any attempts to remove Director Cordray from his position are without historical precedent, and intended solely to distract the director and the bureau from its important work protecting servicemembers, students and other borrowers from financial predation,” the ...

Late last week, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals disregarded the objections of the CFPB and gave PHH Corp. permission to respond to the federal government’s arguments in support of en banc review of the court’s earlier three-judge panel decision.“Upon consideration of petitioners’ motion for leave to file a supplemental response to petition for rehearing en banc, the opposition thereto, and the reply, it is ordered that the motion be granted,” 11 of the 12 judges wrote in an order issued Jan. 13. PHH’s supplemental response is due Jan. 27, 2017, and is not to exceed 15 pages. Back in October, the three Republican appointees ruled that the CFPB’s leadership structure involving a single director who can be ...

While many in the mortgage industry wait for the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals to decide whether to rehear the arguments of the CFPB in its wrangling with PHH, the plaintiffs in State National Bank of Big Spring, Texas, et al. v. Lew, et al. have stepped back onto the legal stage at the district court level. Specifically, “Plaintiffs respectfully move [the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia] to hold a status conference at its earliest convenience to determine how this case ... can be most efficiently adjudicated in light of the CFPB’s petition for en banc review of the panel decision in PHH Corp. v. CFPB,” State National Bank and its parties asked the appeals ...

The U.S. Department of Justice recently reached a settlement with two jointly owned but independently operated banks in Ohio, Union Savings Bank and Guardian Savings Bank, resolving allegations that the pair engaged in a pattern or practice of redlining predominantly African-American neighborhoods in and around the Ohio cities of Cincinnati, Columbus and Dayton, as well as in Indianapolis. According to the government’s complaint, Union (with $2.7 billion in assets and 29 branches) and Guardian (with $861 million in assets and 11 branches) violated the Fair Housing Act and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, which prohibit financial institutions from discriminating on the basis of race and color in their mortgage lending practices. The Justice Department alleges that, from at least 2010 ...

Trump Administration Staffs up Bureau ‘Landing Team.’ The transition team of the incoming administration of President-elect Trump recently announced the members of its CFPB “landing team,” one of whom is Paul Atkins, currently CEO of Patomak Global Partners, a consulting firm. Atkins is a former commissioner at the Securities and Exchange Commission.... House, Senate Re-tool for 115th Congress. Congressional leaders have updated their committee and subcommittee leadership assignments for a new Congress that promises to put more heat than ever on the CFPB, now that a Republican will occupy the White House for the first time since the passage of the Dodd-Frank Act and the establishment of the bureau....