Groups Issue Euro CMBS, ABS Guidelines

Two securitization groups have released guidelines for participants in the commercial mortgage- and asset-backed securities markets that are designed to address challenges they face in complying with a European Commission directive.The commission's market abuse directive, which is designed to prevent uneven disclosure of information that could affect securities' prices, raises challenges for these market participants because the special-purpose vehicles through which their transactions are issued have differences in their "investor base of various transaction tranches" and in the "position of various parties with reporting roles." The guidelines by the Commercial Mortgage Securities Association and the European Securitisation Forum address these concerns by setting guidelines that suggest including in "offering and contractual documents what will happen if material non-public information is received by any of the transaction participants." The groups can be found on the Web at http://www.cmbs.org and http://www.europeansecuritisation.com.