Complete news archive
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CIBC Mellon's corporate trust business acquired
BNY Mellon has signed a definitive agreement to acquire the corporate trust business of CIBC Mellon. The acquisition will more than double BNY Mellon's share of the corporate trust market in Canada and expand its presence in servicing domestic and cross-border debt issuances, structured credit and securitisations, government stimulus programmes and public private partnership transactions, it says.
The acquisition is .......
Job Swaps 17 February 2010
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US RMBS investor mulls strategy change
US fixed income manager Declaration Management & Research (DMR) is planning a more flexible approach to its RMBS investment strategy following the early liquidation of its two RMBS opportunity funds - DMR Mortgage Opportunity Fund and DMR Mortgage Opportunity Companion Fund - at the end of January (see last week's issue). Although the firm says intrinsic value in many private-label .......
News 17 February 2010
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Portfolio repositioning transaction completed
Primus Financial Products has completed its fourth portfolio repositioning transaction with a significant counterparty. The CDPC terminated US$300m notional principal of three bespoke tranche transactions and paid the counterparty a termination fee of US$35m, at a discount to the market value of the these transactions.
Primus Financial has been undertaking these repositioning transactions since 31 July 2009, resulting in the .......
Job Swaps 17 February 2010
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Kohlberg faces fair value suit
Glancy Binkow & Goldberg has filed a class action lawsuit in the US District Court for the Central District of California on behalf of investors who purchased Kohlberg Capital Corporation securities between 16 March 2009 and 24 December 2009. The complaint charges Kohlberg and certain of its executive officers with violations of federal securities laws.
The complaint alleges that throughout .......
Job Swaps 17 February 2010
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Offshore SF lawyer to head finance group
International financial law firm Walkers has appointed Jersey solicitor Alexandra Corner as head of the firm's Jersey finance and corporate group. Corner has been working in the finance and corporate department of Walkers' London office since 2006, with a principal focus on Jersey and Cayman Islands structured and asset finance and capital markets work.
Prior to joining Walkers she worked .......
Job Swaps 17 February 2010
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Permacap to repurchase shares
The board of directors of GSO's permanent capital vehicle, Carador, is to sell shares back to the company. The board believes that repurchasing shares at a discount to NAV will be advantageous to the company and shareholders, both by being accretive to the NAV per share and by potentially reducing the discount at which the shares currently trade. In addition, .......
Job Swaps 17 February 2010
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Valuation service extends into Asia
Pricing Partners has opened a new regional office in Singapore to provide global distribution of its products and services suite across Asia. The Singapore office will be directed by Rosh Rai who has over 15 years of sales/business development experience in Asia. Prior to working with Pricing Partners, Rai worked for a leading derivatives solution firm and Thomson Reuters Financial .......
Job Swaps 17 February 2010
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Trading ideas: controlled recovery
Byron Douglass, senior research analyst at Credit Derivative...
Johnson Controls delivered solid first-quarter results in January, bringing the company's bottom-line back to healthy status. While keeping costs down, margins, revenues and cashflow all reverted back towards 2007 levels.
Relative to comparable issuers, Johnson Controls' fundamentals leave its CDS spread undervalued as our MFCI credit model recently turned positive. We recommend selling protection on the company.
Johnson Controls' fundamentals .......
Research Notes 17 February 2010
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Repurchase reaction
Investors respond to GSE delinquent loan buybacks
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's decision to repurchase billions of dollars of 120 day-plus delinquent loans from their guarantee books has resulted in varying reactions in the investor community. While anticipated volatility is attracting some accounts to the sector, others can't sell their holdings fast enough.
"The prices of agency MBS are getting slammed - particularly 5.5 and 6 coupons," .......
News Analysis 17 February 2010
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Italian RMBS protected against forbearance scheme
UniCredit has launched a scheme that is intended to curb any negative impact on its RMBS transactions connected with the Italian government's mortgage borrower forbearance scheme (Piano Famiglie). Affected transactions include the Cordusio, F-E Mortgages and Heliconus RMBS.
The Piano Famiglie scheme allows borrowers that meet certain criteria to enjoy a payment holiday period of a maximum of 12 months .......
News Round-up 17 February 2010
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Illiquid solution
Celestino Amore, md and founder of IlliquidX, answers SCI's questions
Q: How and when did IlliquidX become involved in the structured credit market?
Provider Profile 10 February 2010
A: IlliquidX is a financial services boutique providing innovative solutions to professional investors that include institutional, corporate and high net worth clients. We enable our clients to effectively price and trade illiquid securities, such as high yield and distressed debt, bankruptcy claims, NPLs, MBS, CLOs, CDOs and CSOs. .......
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Hermes flies again
Dutch RMBS remarketed in softening secondary market
SNS Bank has remarketed and placed one tranche of its previously-retained Hermes XIV RMBS against the backdrop of a weakening secondary European ABS market. The three-year €1.4bn class A2 tranche was sold at 115bp after the deal was restructured and the coupon increased from 38bp previously.
"It got a positive response - it is Dutch paper and, generally speaking, Dutch .......
News Analysis 10 February 2010
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Staying firm
US secondary market CLO activity to 9 February
As with its European counterpart (SCI passim), the secondary US CLO market continues to thrive in its current role as safe-haven for investors. As last week turned into this, BWIC activity maintained its strength and spreads stayed firm.
Yesterday, 9 February, ended positively for the US CLO market, with prices coming down. Equity pieces were seen trading at 40, double-Bs .......
News Analysis 10 February 2010
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French bank expands ABS headcount
BNP Paribas has made a number of hires within its ABS division. Perry Inglis, former head of S&P's CDO business and most recently employed by structured finance advisory boutique AgFe, has joined the bank as head of ABS origination and valuation.
Meanwhile, Giovanni Pini - former ABS research analyst at European Capital Management - is joining BNP Paribas as ABS .......
Job Swaps 10 February 2010
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New strategies
Dislocation funds repositioned for next wave of opportunity
Two structured credit fund managers - Highland Capital Management and Declaration Management & Research - this week announced the early liquidation of opportunity funds launched in 2008. Investors in the funds made substantial returns and, while one manager admits the intrinsic cheapness of these securities has disappeared, both plan to continue investing in this space over the next six to .......
News Analysis 10 February 2010
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Monoline anticipates Euro ABS opportunities
Assured Guaranty indicates it is seeing signs of support in the European structured finance market for wrapped products and anticipates writing new business in certain ABS sectors - such as consumer, auto loan and trade receivables - in the near future.
According to Nick Proud, recently-promoted senior md, international, at the monoline (see SCI 167), as structured financings outside of .......
News Round-up 10 February 2010
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New US CMBS rated
Ratings have been assigned to two classes of notes from GTP Global Tower Series 2010-1 - a US cell tower-backed CMBS arranged by Barclays Capital and Deutsche Bank. Fitch has assigned a single-A minus rating to the US$200m class C notes and a double-B minus rating to the US$50m class F notes.
The transaction is backed by mortgages representing no .......
News Round-up 10 February 2010
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GAO foresees CMBS risks
The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) has issued a report to Congressional committees highlighting that the Treasury needs to strengthen its decision-making process on the TALF programme. The report also notes that although TALF contains a number of risk management features that reduce the risk of loss to TARP funds, risks - particularly related to CMBS - remain.
According to .......
News Round-up 10 February 2010
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Mortgage REIT details TALF purchases
Apollo Commercial Real Estate Finance (ARI) says it has completed investments in CMBS totalling US$349m. These investments involved the deployment of US$127.8m, or approximately 61%, of the equity capital raised in the REIT's initial public offering.
During Q409, the company completed the origination and acquisition of mezzanine loans totalling US$50m and securities totaling US$154.7m. Further, during January 2010, the company .......
Job Swaps 10 February 2010
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Second liens complicate negative equity
RMBS analysts at JPMorgan have underscored the increasing investor concern over negative equity in the US housing market (see also Talking Point). They note that in 2009 rising current combined LTVs were a larger contributor to poor credit performance than unemployment in the prime sector.
For example, on loans with 100%-110% CLTV current to 30-day rolls were 0.2% higher in .......
News Round-up 10 February 2010
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Co-op on the road
The Co-operative Bank is in the market with its first RMBS deal, the £2.9bn Silk Road Finance No 1, via HSBC and JPMorgan. The transaction will be rated by Fitch and Moody's.
Collateral comprises prime loans backed by owner-occupied residences originated under the Britannia brand name or by the former Britannia Building Society. The pool has a current LTV of .......
News Round-up 10 February 2010