Complete news archive

  • Buy-side clearing challenges examined

    A new report from Celent confirms that the move from bilateral to counterparty clearing of OTC derivatives will require significant resources, especially for buy-side participants.

    The buy-side has historically not had much involvement with central clearing. Now, it will have to ensure that relationships are in place with an appropriate number of executing and clearing brokers, along with connectivity to .......

    News Round-up 6 October 2011

  • CDS trade-date clearing offered

    MarkitSERV has launched trade-date clearing for interdealer credit default swap trades through its trade matching and routing service.

    Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley were the first institutions to use the new system to match and route credit trades for clearing, in close to real time. The trades were cleared by ICE Clear Credit.

    The vast majority of cleared CDS .......

    News Round-up 6 October 2011

  • Negative equity weighing on prime borrowers

    The sputtering US housing market will result in more prime borrowers being pushed further underwater on their mortgages, according to Fitch. Recent analysis by the agency shows that more than a third of all prime borrowers in private-label securitisations are currently in a negative equity position on their mortgages.

    Despite some recent modest gains, home prices have further to fall .......

    News Round-up 6 October 2011

  • Sovereign credit risk report released

    CMA has released its Global Sovereign Debt Credit Risk Report for the third quarter of 2011, in which it names the top-ten most and least risky sovereigns, as well as the best and worst performers.

    In an extremely volatile quarter, the credit markets saw a significant rise in the cost of protection across all regions. The market responded to downgrades .......

    News Round-up 6 October 2011

  • Call to action

    Solvency II impact underestimated?

    Many market participants appear to underestimate the potential impact of Solvency II on European ABS. This has led to a call for the securitisation industry to intensify its lobbying efforts in the region.

    The potential impact of Solvency II on the European ABS market generally appears to be being underestimated, one investment manager confirms. He attributes this to a broadly .......

    News Analysis 6 October 2011

  • Irish Life CDS settled

    The final prices for the CDS senior buckets 1 and 2 in the Irish Life & Permanent August restructuring credit event auction today were determined to be 86 and 75 respectively. 14 dealers submitted inside markets, physical settlement requests and limit orders to the bucket 1 auction and 13 did for the bucket 2 auction. Deliverable obligations are denominated in .......

    News Round-up 5 October 2011

  • Law firm boosts SF team

    DLA Piper has appointed a new structured finance partner in London. Mark McGiddy joins the finance and projects group, reporting to Alex Dell.

    McGiddy moves over from Deutsche Bank, where he was a director within global markets structuring. He has previously served as a senior associate in Freshfields' structured finance team and has experience in cross-border transactions, with an emphasis .......

    Job Swaps 5 October 2011

  • Pricing service unveiled

    RiskSpan has released a proprietary independent daily pricing service for structured products and mortgage assets. The firm's data modelling and scenario capability harnesses the power of cloud computing to deliver an accurate market value with real-time pricing and can process thousands of securities in virtually minutes, it says.

    Joe Sturtevant, co-founder and pricing executive at RiskSpan, comments: "We are now .......

    News Round-up 5 October 2011

  • Vendor strengthens research effort

    Quantifi has appointed Dmitry Pugachevsky as research director, responsible for managing the firm's global research efforts. He brings more than 18 years' counterparty credit and cross-asset modelling experience to Quantifi.

    Pugachevsky joins from JPMorgan, where he was head of counterparty credit modelling and was responsible for developing new models for calculating CVA across different asset classes and supporting credit portfolio .......

    Job Swaps 5 October 2011

  • SME programme proposed

    The UK government unveiled at its party conference preliminary details of an initiative aimed at bolstering lending to SMEs. This stimulus is intended to focus directly on corporate sector funding, in contrast to the Bank of England's earlier quantitative easing, which involved government bond purchases. Since most SMEs do not issue bonds, an alternative may be pooling banks' SME loans .......

    News Round-up 5 October 2011

  • CLO transfer consent requested

    Nomura Corporate Research and Asset Management has filed fifth amended and restated notices of proposed assignment of the investment management agreement for Clydesdale Strategic CLO I and Clydesdale CLO 2005. It has also requested consent from subordinated notes and rated notes, as well as a waiver from the rated notes. The manager is seeking to transfer its rights, duties and .......

    Job Swaps 5 October 2011

  • Agency trading head hired

    Richard Baxter has joined Gleacher & Company Securities as md and head of agency trading, based in the firm's New York headquarters. He has nearly two decades of experience managing sales and trading operations across a broad range of products.

    Baxter was previously md and head of taxable fixed income trading at Cabrera Capital Markets. Before that, he was vp .......

    Job Swaps 5 October 2011

  • RFC issued on op risk criteria

    S&P has requested comments on its proposal to refine and adapt its methodology for assessing operational risk in structured finance transactions. The updated criteria introduces an operational "risk screen", which highlights the key operational risk factors that are examined in each structured finance transaction.

    The risk screen examines potential operational risks under four categories: transaction party profiles; conflicts of interest, .......

    News Round-up 5 October 2011

  • RMBS class action settled

    Dynex Capital has entered into a memorandum of understanding reflecting an agreement in principle to settle all claims asserted against all defendants of a class action lawsuit now pending in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. The lawsuit was filed by the Teamsters Local 445 Freight Division Pension Fund in February 2005 and alleged violations .......

    Job Swaps 5 October 2011

  • Credit mandate announced

    GLG Ore Hill has announced that it has raised US$200m for a large institutional client's credit mandate, bringing its funds under management to US$1.7bn as of 1 September. Since the completion of Man's acquisition of the remaining 50% of Ore Hill in March (SCI 30 March), the firm's operations have been integrated into and are now managed as part of .......

    Job Swaps 5 October 2011

  • Answers provided

    EBA clarifies Article 122a risk retention issues

    The European Banking Authority (EBA) has published a set of answers to questions received about Article 122a of the EU's capital requirements directive. In "a huge step forward for the market", the answers build on the CEBS guidelines from December 2010 and clear up many previous uncertainties.

    Doug Long, evp business strategy at Principia, explains that the previous guidance left .......

    News Analysis 4 October 2011

  • Sustained shortfalls?

    Concerns remain over Beacon Seattle loan mod

    Nearly a year has passed since modifications to the US$2.7bn Beacon Seattle & DC Portfolio loan were set in motion. However, with concerns over equity shortfalls at maturity and the inability of some servicers to protect senior bondholders' rights, the jury is still out as to whether the restructuring has been - or will be - classified a success.

    Originated .......

    News Analysis 4 October 2011

  • Auction platform hires for resi expansion

    Auction.com has named Elizabeth O'Brien as md and svp. She will be based in the company's New York office and will lead its growing residential capital markets business.

    "Beth's expertise enables us to build on the success of our residential foreclosures and commercial notes platforms and expand into residential notes," says Auction.com ceo Jeff Frieden. "Her track record in distressed .......

    Job Swaps 4 October 2011

  • US CMBS delinquencies stabilise

    After two very sharp moves over the last two months - a huge jump in July and a big dip in August - CMBS delinquencies stabilised in September, according to Trepp's latest delinquency report. For at least one month, the reading reverted to its pattern from earlier in the year when modest bumps in the rate were the norm.

    In .......

    News Round-up 3 October 2011

  • Reaction needed for US CMBS

    The US CMBS market spent last week waiting on news from Europe, but the launch of a new market index and the arrival of a floating rate deal this week should generate interest. Whether this interest translates into increased activity remains to be seen, however.

    Today (3 October) marks the launch of the Markit TRX.II indices (SCI 20 September), comprising .......

    Market Reports 3 October 2011

  • Marginal change in Euro CMBS repayments

    Fitch says its European CMBS Maturity Repayment Index changed only marginally during September, increasing to 41.7% from 41.1% in the previous month, due to full and partial redemptions totalling €140.9m. This slight change is explained by the fact that only two loans reached their maturity dates during the month. Combined with the redemptions, this resulted in the outstanding matured balance .......

    News Round-up 3 October 2011
×