Archive for December, 2010
Republicans omitted the words “derivatives” and “deregulation” from their report released Wednesday on the cause of the financial crisis that shook the economy to the brink in 2008.
Instead, the report, released by GOP members of a bipartisan Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, concentrates much of its 13 pages on how mortgage refinance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as public companies, contributed to the crisis by investing in and guaranteeing mortgages of “increasingly lower quality and higher risk to the taxpayer.” It also argues that mortgage-related losses at big banks that were undercapitalized all led to a financial panic.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Citigroup Inc. sold $876.45 million of bonds linked to U.S. commercial real estate, pushing 2010 sales to $11.5 billion as strategists forecast next year’s offerings will quadruple.
Property owners are pushing banks to offer better loan terms as more lenders vie for a share of the $650 billion commercial-mortgage bond market. Between 20 and 25 institutions are seeking to originate loans they plan to package into securities, up from about five competitors a year ago, New York- based Standard & Poor’s said in a Dec. 2 report. Issuance plunged to $3.4 billion in 2009 from a record $234 billion in 2007 after the financial crisis froze credit markets.
New capital requirements under the Basel 3 framework would have cost banks roughly $770 billion had they been fully implemented at the end of last year, according to a 32-page study released Thursday by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision.
The study also said that the shortfall for larger banks considered to be well-diversified and internationally active was far greater than for smaller institutions when it came to meeting new capital, leverage and liquidity ratios.
Richard Cordray, Ohio’s attorney general, is about to take his battle against foreclosure fraud, abusive payday lenders and misbehaving global financial houses to Washington.
Mr. Cordray, a Democrat, was named today to oversee enforcement at the new Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection. He lost his bid for re-election last month by the thinnest of margins to former Senator Michael DeWine.
Mortgage REIT investors have spent the better part of December sifting through press releases from companies such as Dynex Capital, Annaly Capital Management, Hatteras Financial and MFA Financial. What investors have been searching for are dividend announcements and stock offerings — and there have been plenty of both! In fact, every day this week investors have seen new press releases from these companies, with the news sending the individual stocks both higher and lower.
Bank of America Corp., after vowing to fight requests that it repurchase certain loans, has begun potential settlement discussions with some of its largest mortgage investors.
The 17-member group now in talks with the nation's largest bank as measured by assets includes the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, government-owned mortgage company Freddie Mac, BlackRock Inc., and Allianz SE's Pacific Investment Management Co., or Pimco.
