Complete news archive

  • Business boost

    TALF helps rating agency gain market share

    DBRS is making inroads into the US ABS rating market, gaining market share as its competitors see less business. Moody's, S&P and Fitch have all seen decreases in market share this year, with the latter appearing to be most affected.

    Moody's and S&P have long dominated the credit ratings market and each rated approximately 97% of ABS issued in 2007, .......

    News Analysis 9 June 2010

  • ASF examines regulation, makes appointments

    The American Securitization Forum (ASF) met yesterday (8 June) to discuss regulatory issues facing US ABS. It has also appointed Armando Falcon as senior policy advisor and elected its board of directors.

    Falcon is currently chairman and ceo of Falcon Capital Advisors. From 1999 to 2005 he served as director of the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight and as .......

    Job Swaps 9 June 2010

  • Further CLO upgrades expected

    Moody's has followed S&P's lead in reversing its earlier downgrades of US CLO tranches, according to structured credit strategists at Citi.

    The analysts point out that, since the beginning of May, Moody's has upgraded 105 tranches across 23 deals ranging across the entire spectrum of vintages. Most of the upgrades were focused on the mezzanine tranches, which is the part .......

    News Round-up 9 June 2010

  • Call for quicker European CDS action

    A joint two-page letter has been sent by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel to José Manuel Barroso, calling on the European Commission president to ban naked CDS on sovereign bonds. The two leaders want proposals on short selling and sovereign CDS to be ready by the middle of July, rather than October as planned.

    The letter .......

    News Round-up 9 June 2010

  • Unclear outcome

    GSE uncertainty lurks, despite performance

    Despite hefty demand for MBS securities currently, much uncertainty still exists over what shape Fannie Mae (FNMA) and Freddie Mac will take after the Treasury's backstop is up for the GSEs in 2012. Investors are expected to begin evaluating the potential outcomes going into the fourth quarter.

    One issue is what will happen to legacy MBS after 2012. The Treasury .......

    News Analysis 9 June 2010

  • Navigating the post-crisis landscape

    Evan Schwartzberg, head of sales and trading, and Mathew Van...

    Q: How and when did Odeon Capital Group become involved in the structured finance market?
    MVA:     Odeon Capital Group launched a year ago with six people and now has a head-count of almost 40. We're a full-service boutique broker-dealer, with over US$2.5bn in transaction volume so far.

    Our expertise is in distressed corporate credits and structured .......

    Provider Profile 9 June 2010

  • Five hires to credit sales, trading teams

    RBS Securities has expanded its US flow credit sales and trading teams within its global banking and markets division in the Americas. The five new hires to the Stamford, Connecticut, office are Robert Williams, Michael Regan, Seth Bernstein, Richard Joyce and Tom Daly.

    Scott Eichel, global co-head of MBS, CMBS and ABS trading and head of US flow credit trading .......

    Job Swaps 9 June 2010

  • Credit business expands in new direction

    BlueBay Asset Management has hired Mark Dowding to lead the development of a European government bond business at the firm. He joins as senior portfolio manager and will co-head the European investment grade team with Raphael Robelin, BlueBay's head of investment grade credit. Robelin will focus on corporate bonds, while Dowding will focus on government bonds.

    Dowding joins from Deutsche .......

    Job Swaps 9 June 2010

  • Head of global credit strategy hired

    BNP Paribas Asset Management has hired Martin Fridson as global credit strategist. Fridson is a high yield specialist with more than 30 years of experience in the industry and joins the global credit investment team from Fridson Investment Advisors, where he was ceo. Fridson will be based in New York and become head of strategy within global credit, responsible for .......

    Job Swaps 9 June 2010

  • Counterparty criteria to impact derivatives

    The biggest impact from S&P's proposed changes to its counterparty criteria is on securities with derivative obligations, according to Francis Parisi, chief credit officer, global structured finance at S&P on a conference call regarding methodology and assumptions for counterparty criteria.

    Triple-A or double-A rated securities would be the most affected, Parisi said. "We expect minimal impact on mezzanine bonds or .......

    News 9 June 2010

  • Merger results in CDO manager transfer

    BNP Paribas Asset Management (BNP) has succeeded Fortis Investment Management France (Fortis) as portfolio manager on the Titian CDO transaction. The move follows the full merger of Fortis into BNP, including the transfer of all its assets and liabilities. BNP says that all contractual rights and duties of Fortis under the portfolio management agreement were taken over unchanged.

    S&P has .......

    Job Swaps 9 June 2010

  • Former Lehman team reassembles

    G2 Capital Markets, a subsidiary of G2 Investment Group, has acquired the former Lehman Brothers' private placement and illiquid credit trading team. They will be in familiar company, joining an existing group of former Lehman executives who have come to G2 since its inception.

    The esoteric credit trading team specialises in analysing, marketing, trading and settling illiquid credit securities. It .......

    Job Swaps 9 June 2010

  • Changes to permacap's operations proposed

    Permacap vehicle Carador is set to propose a number of changes to its operations at its 30 June AGM.

    First, a change in name to 'Carador Income Fund' has been proposed to reflect the company's distribution policy, whereby all net income is distributed as quarterly dividends. The investment manager believes that the discretion to make distributions out of realised and .......

    Job Swaps 9 June 2010

  • Moody's ceo says compensation not linked to deals

    Compensation at Moody's is not tied to the number of securities analysts rate, the number of companies they follow or the share that is gained or lost in the market, according to its chairman and ceo Raymond McDaniel at the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission's (FCIC) hearing on 2 June over the rating agency's role in the credit crisis. The comments .......

    News 9 June 2010

  • JPMorgan's CMBS comes tight for investors

    JPMorgan's US$716.3m CMBS offering - which marks the second CMBS transaction to come to market this year following RBS' US$309.7m deal in April - is marketing at tight spread levels, according to investors. The deal has yet to price.

    Three of the triple-A rated tranches on the JPMCC 2010-C1 transaction total US$608.9m, but the offering also includes double-A, single-A and .......

    News 9 June 2010

  • Private placements keep Euro ABS ticking over

    Five European deals closed over the last week, but they were either privately-placed, retained or restructured. While the fact that ABS are still being issued is positive, the nature of the placement isn't helping the current funding malaise in the region.

    European ABS analysts at Barclays Capital note that private issuance means placement with a small number of investors, which .......

    News Round-up 9 June 2010

  • Freddie targets affordable properties for securitisation

    Freddie Mac hopes to add targeted affordable properties to the growing list of financing products eligible for securitisation, according to a spokesperson at the company. The ones for inclusion are "on the horizon", she says.

    The GSE, which settled its first multifamily MBS K certificates in June 2009, added multifamily senior housing mortgages and conventional structured finance transactions to the .......

    News Round-up 9 June 2010

  • Ambac CDS settle lower than expected

    The final results of Ambac Assurance Corp's CDS credit event auction were released on 4 June. The inside market midpoint was 27.5, while the final price was determined to be 20.

    The net open interest was US$300.098m to sell. Fourteen bidders participated in the dealer inside markets. BNP Paribas had one of the highest bid/offers at 28.5/31.5, while UBS Securities .......

    News Round-up 9 June 2010

  • Call for limiting leverage in muni CDS

    California state treasurer Bill Lockyer has called for the adoption of federal and international rules to limit leverage in the trading of municipal CDS, to help prevent naked derivatives trading. The move follows his receipt of responses from six Wall Street investment banks to a request for further information on these banks' muni CDS activity that he issued last month .......

    News Round-up 9 June 2010

  • GSE buyout impact normalising

    ABS analysts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch forecast Gold 30-year prepayment speeds to increase by 10% in June, due to higher day count and a 5% increase in the MBA refinance index.

    "For Fannie Mae, buyouts will normalise for most of the coupons as one-time buyouts are now left only for 4.5 and lower coupons," the analysts notes. "In .......

    News Round-up 9 June 2010

  • Subprime prices rise to 18-month high

    Fitch Solutions reports that US subprime CDS prices have increased to levels not reached since December 2008. Fitch's subprime RMBS total market price index increased by 7.6% month-on-month to reach 9.37.

    "Subprime asset quality has not only stabilised, but begun to improve significantly - a far cry from the historic lows at the beginning of 2010," says Fitch Solutions md .......

    News Round-up 9 June 2010
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