Complete news archive

  • Manager consolidation gathers momentum

    M&A activity within the CLO and CDO management space continues apace. Several managers have announced new mandates within the past week, including Prudential Fixed Income, which has been selected as replacement manager for two European CLOs originally managed by GSC Partners - GSC European CDO III and GSC European CDO IV.

    GSC Partners, which also has a number of US .......

    News 14 April 2010

  • Hedge fund makes ABS hire

    Otaso Osayimwese has joined Ravenscourt Capital Partners, where he is understood to be working on the ABS desk. He previously held roles at JC Rathbone and Lehman Brothers.

    David Sol, an ABS investor at Ravenscourt Capital, left the firm last month. He has reportedly taken on a new role at Standard Life in Edinburgh.

    .......

    Job Swaps 14 April 2010

  • More cat bonds line up

    Catastrophe bond investors have been given headline details of three new deals as speculation is mounting over a possible future cat bond as a longer-term structure continues to do the rounds. Meanwhile, a new report from GC Securities has some bullish predictions for further market activity.

    The three new deals are 2010 versions of previous transactions referencing US perils and investors .......

    News 14 April 2010

  • Credit derivatives salesman appointed

    Bank of America Merrill Lynch is understood to have hired Michael Poppel as head of structured bank sales for the EMEA region. It is thought that Poppel will be based in London, reporting to head of EMEA fixed income structured solutions sales Chris Gugelmann from May of this year.

    Poppel is an executive director and credit derivatives sales/marketer at Goldman .......

    Job Swaps 14 April 2010

  • Strategic bond fund to focus on liquidity

    The TwentyFour Asset Management Dynamic Bond Fund is set to launch at the end of April. The fund will be managed by lead portfolio managers, Gary Kirk and Eoin Walsh, and is to be distributed by Gemini Investment Management.

    By focusing on liquidity, the strategic bond fund intends to position itself within the fixed income market adapting to both economic .......

    News 14 April 2010

  • Deterioration continues in EMEA consumer loan ABS

    The performance of the EMEA consumer loan ABS market continued to deteriorate in February, says Moody's. The rating agency's gross default trend increased by 63% over the past 12 months with a 2.4% default rate, up from 1.5% in February 2009.

    Meanwhile, Moody's delinquency trend stabilised at 0.6% for the 90-180 delinquencies over original balance. The constant prepayment rate (CPR) .......

    News Round-up 14 April 2010

  • ABS duo recruited

    Goldman Sachs is understood to have made two ABS hires in London. Rohit Sen, previously an ABS trader at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, will take on a similar role at the bank. Morten Pedersen joins Goldman's European ABS team as a desk quant, having previously worked at UBS.

    A spokesperson for Goldman Sachs declined to comment on the hires.

    .......

    Job Swaps 14 April 2010

  • New OTC liquidity service launched

    Xtrakter has launched XVOL, its new OTC liquidity service providing access to a range of liquidity and volume data to help users better determine the liquidity of differing OTC fixed income securities.

    XVOL provides subscribers with the total volume figure for each security traded in the preceding month and a unique flag indicating the level of trading in each listed .......

    News Round-up 14 April 2010

  • CreditTrade ceo finds new home

    Electronic trading platform operator MarketAxess Holdings has appointed Paul Ellis as head of MarketAxess Europe, effective 12 April.

    "Paul has the ideal background to lead MarketAxess Europe through our next phase of growth," says Richard McVey, MarketAxess chairman and ceo. "He has extensive experience in bond and derivative markets and has successfully built new businesses in the credit default swap .......

    Job Swaps 14 April 2010

  • Faring well

    European MBS activity in the two weeks to 8 April

    The weeks leading up to Easter showed a flurry of RMBS activity as investors sought to prepare for both month-end and the close of the quarter. At the same time, the CMBS market has remained stable, with particular interest in mezzanine tranches.

    Within RMBS, one trader explains: "We are on fairly thin volume, given that there aren't too many people .......

    Market Reports 14 April 2010

  • Positioning for the future

    Marjorie Hogan, senior portfolio manager at Capstone Credit Advisors, answers SCI's questions

    Q: How and when did you become involved in the credit and MBS markets?
    A:     My first exposure to the MBS markets was in the late 1980s when CMOs were in their infancy. In 1986 I built an OAS model for First Boston, which was used to analyse relative value and estimate hedge ratios for fixed .......

    The Structured Credit Interview 14 April 2010

  • RMBS sponsor sells European operations

    GMAC Financial Services' mortgage subsidiary Residential Capital (ResCap) - sponsor to the RMAC and EMAC NL/DE RMBS programmes - is selling its European mortgage assets and businesses to Fortress Investment Group, as GMAC looks to exit the European mortgage market. The sale will include certain loan assets - including non-performing loans - and servicing rights and the shares of the .......

    Job Swaps 14 April 2010

  • Monoline payment claim resumption hopes dashed

    Syncora Guarantee has closed the outstanding transaction that formed part of the company's restructuring, previously approved by the New York Insurance Department in July last year, that included CDS commutations and RMBS buybacks (see SCI issue 146). However, the monoline remains unable to recommence the payment of claims, which have been suspended since April 2009.

    Earlier this year, Syncora Guarantee .......

    Job Swaps 14 April 2010

  • Early liquidation for CLO's OAT strip protection

    Class D2 and D3 noteholders in CELF Low Levered Partners CLO have voted for an early liquidation of their share of the transaction's OAT strips after the deal's documentation was amended to allow such an action. Class D benefits from credit enhancement provided by certain OAT strips, which were acquired on closing from the issuance proceeds of classes E and .......

    News Round-up 14 April 2010

  • H210 US house price low projected

    ABS analysts at JPMorgan continue to project that US home prices will bottom in H210, with peak-to-trough HPA at -32.6% for the Case-Shiller national index. "The labour market improvement is encouraging, but further additions to the already very large housing inventory from rising foreclosures remains a downside risk to home price," they note in their February Home Price Monthly Update.

    News Round-up 14 April 2010

  • Buoyant and robust

    US CLO market activity in the two weeks to 13 April

    The secondary US CLO market has shown a marked improvement over the past few weeks, with both appetite and prices increasing. However, despite this, the market is still unlikely to see genuine primary issuance in the coming months.

    One CLO investor describes the current trading environment as fairly positive. He says: "As CLOs are reaching new highs, people are starting ......

    Market Reports 14 April 2010

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  • Reporting rules

    Market caught out by cashflow waterfall disclosure plan

    The US SEC last week proposed new rules that, if adopted, would revise the disclosure, reporting and offering process for ABS. Although the market had been anticipating new requirements around loan-level data, the proposed disclosure of cashflow waterfalls came as a surprise.

    "The new proposal bridges the gap between loan-level data and actually understanding the performance of an investment," explains .......

    News Analysis 13 April 2010

  • Shot in the arm

    New terms expected to revitalise LCDX tranche trading

    The new bullet LCDS standard terms documentation (SCI passim) was published on 5 April, in tandem with the implementation of market practice changes to the trading convention for North American LCDS transactions. As well as increasing liquidity in single name LCDS, the move is expected to revitalise LCDX tranche trading.

    The new bullet LCDS standard terms documentation allows parties to .......

    News Analysis 7 April 2010

  • Questions of principal

    Could US forbearance initiatives be replicated in European MBS?

    The non-agency mortgage principal forbearance initiatives currently underway in the US are being seen as useful templates for stressed European residential mortgage markets, such as Ireland and Spain. However, some believe that principal forgiveness will ultimately play a greater role in resolving problems in the region's commercial mortgage markets.

    "Both Ireland and Spain have witnessed mortgage debt rescheduling initiatives of .......

    News Analysis 7 April 2010

  • LCDX, MCDX roll

    The Markit LCDX.NA and MCDX.NA indices rolled into their fourteenth series on 5 April. LCDX tranche indices will roll on 12 April.

    Three constituents have been replaced in the LCDX.NA index: Dex Media West, Charter Communications Operating and Supermedia replace NewPage Corporation, Getty Images and Warner Chilcott Company. The constituents of the MCDX.NA indices remained unchanged.

    Additionally, due to the .......

    News Round-up 7 April 2010

  • Increased clarity around CLO consolidations

    Increased clarity regarding the estimated market price of CLO management mandates has emerged due to the recent sale of CLO management contracts by Columbus Nova to Deerfield Capital (see SCI issue 177). Structured credit analysts at Citi note in a new report that the sale is a rare case of CLO management consolidation transaction details becoming public, due to Deerfield's .......

    News 7 April 2010
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