B>Rep. Richard Baker, R-La., wants OFHEO to brief him on what it knows about Fannie Mae shifting $135 billion in assets from "held to maturity" status to "held for sale" status. The shift apparently resulted in Fannie increasing its shareholder equity by $4 billion in the most recent quarter. The timing is interesting because the quarter just ended is the first in which Fannie (as well as Freddie Mac) must comply (for the first time ever) with OFHEO's much maligned risk based capital rule. (See National Mortgage News' MortgageWire affiliate on Monday for an update.) Fannie's stock price got knocked around a bit on Thursday...
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Are things looking up for Fannie Mae critic General Electric? Maybe, maybe not. On Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that hedge fund star Ravi Suria canceled a speech entitled "GE Capital: Fact, Fiction and Book Value." According to the newspaper, Mr. Suria was to discuss why GE is a doubtful stock pick due to its "opaque" GE Capital unit. GE's mortgage insurance unit (which is conservatively managed and highly profitable) is an active member of FM Watch, which lobbies against the GSEs...
Early this past week, rumors were flying that Bank One might take a run at J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. (Analysts who cover JPM expressed their doubts about the rumor.) From a mortgage standpoint, a Bank One takeover of JPM would be interesting for two reasons: Bank One long ago bolted the conventional mortgage market -- though it's a huge player in the home equity niche. If Bank One bought JPM, what would it do with the mega-bank/investment banker's conventional mortgage operation? Sell it? JPM, like GE, is a member of FM Watch. If Bank One bought JPM, would it leave the group? For now, it's all academic, but one thing's for certain: JPM shareholders can't be happy with the company's stock price which is $20 compared to a 52-week high of almost $41...
In the third quarter, Freddie Mac's average "g-fee" was 18.6 basis points, compared to 18.5 basis points in the previous quarter as well as the year ago quarter...
Countrywide Credit Industries says it has 3.7 million servicing customers who have a weighted average mortgage rate of just 7.1% -- compared to 7.6% a year ago...
Morgan Stanley issued a report this past week calling MGIC Investment "attractive." Analyst Ken Posner has set a $55, 12-month price target on the company. He notes that the MI has been buying back more shares than he anticipated. (MGIC and PMI Group are the two largest MIs in the U.S.)...
Jeff Lebowitz, who runs the well-regarded MorTech study, is relocating from Silver Spring, Md. to Chester, Conn. If you lose track of Jeff he can be emailed at: sspjal@aol.com...
The buzz on this past week's annual convention of the Mortgage Bankers Association in Chicago has been quite good. Attendance and trade show attendance was strong and the trade group is predicting that it will break even or be in the black for 2003...
RBC Mortgage, Chicago, is opening a branch office in Melville, N.Y. in the hot Long Island market. Melville is the corporate HQ of the fast growing American Home Mortgage Holdings. RBC was formerly known as Prism Mortgage ...
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: Former OTS director Ellen Seidman has been hired as senior managing director of Shorebank Advisory Services, the consulting arm of Shorebank, Chicago, a community development bank.
AND FINALLY: A weak economic recovery and its related effects will soften the U.S. commercial real estate market for at least another year, according to a new report issued by PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Lend Lease Real Estate Investments . According to the two firms, the five best commercial real estate markets are Washington, D.C., New York, Southern California, Chicago and Boston.
