While Hurricane Isabel lashed the nation's capital late this past week, a lobbyinghurricane orchestrated by Fannie Maewas hitting lawmakers, sources said. One mortgage official said Fannie was "spending a ton of money"and time trying to get elected officials to see things its way. Even though Fannie Mae chairman Franklin Raines said his company welcomes theadministration's (Treasury's)approach to regulating the GSEs, he reportedly wants any legislation to include a five-year moratorium on changingits capital requirement, currently at 2.5% of on balance sheet holdings. Treasury secretary John Snow, so far, has said: no moratoriums. Stay tuned...
Brokerage firm Edward Jones made some changes to its "model" portfolio recently, deleting Fannie Mae andother financial service stocks. The company said Fannie has grown so large that it will be harder to sustain itspast earnings growth rate. As we might recall, Edward Jones and some other brokerage firms were selling small denominationFannie debt securities to the general public, a move that ticked off America'sCommunity Bankers...
The folks at GE Mortgage Insurance are buying lunch at this year's MBA convention. OK, maybe not, but GE employees, includingthose at its very profitable MI unit, have reason to celebrate. The company's stock reached a new 52-week highthis past week...
It was a barnburner of a first half for the nation's subprime residential lenders.According to the brand new issue of the midyear Quarterly Data Report, the top 50 subprime funders produced $135 billion in home mortgages, a 49% increase fromthe same period last year. Leading the pack: Household, New Centuryand CitiFinancial...
Remember when Capitol Commerce went bust in early August? A source familiar with the matter said all of its major warehouserlenders were at the company the weekend of the collapse securing loan files (collateral), all but one: UBS Securities. UBS continues to put up the "coneof silence" on all matters related to CapCom...
On Monday, Fitch Ratings upgraded and affirmed the servicer ratings of CountrywideFinancial Corp.'s mortgage unit based on its financial, managerial andtechnological strengths. CFC's stock was on a tear this past week, closing the week at about $77...
Bad employment news means bad news for the "purchase money" mortgagemarket -- and for servicers. Here's some really bad employment news: R.J.Reynolds Tobacco said on Wednesday it would lay off 40% of its employees,or 2,600 workers. Yes, that's right: 40%. Of course the news resulted in the firm's shares rising 13% at one pointduring the day...
American Mortgage Network, a subsidiaryof American Residential Investment Trust,has opened a new South Central regional center in Houston to serve mortgage brokers in Houston, Austin, San Antonio,Corpus Christi and the Rio Grande Valley...
Cendant Corp., the parent of Cendant Mortgage, said it prepaid its $375 millionmandatorily redeemable debt securities on Sept. 5, 2003..
WASHINGTON NEWS: Larry Lindsey, who was mentioned early on as a possiblecandidate for the Freddie Mac CEO job, last week predicted that the U.S. economy finally will experience real jobgrowth. This much-needed event, he predicted, would occur in early 2004 -- just in time to help president Bush'sre-election campaign....
MORTGAGE PEOPLE: Michael Cacciaguida has been named president of Champion Mortgage, a division of Cleveland-basedKeyBank USA. Meanwhile, Allen L. Wehrhahn has been named president ofKey Home Equity Services, alsoa division of KeyBank. Radian Guarantyhas named Joe Doyle senior accountexecutive, responsible for developing and maintaining client relationships in Wisconsin.
MORTGAGE DATA: National Mortgage News has just released itsnew loan broker database, including information on the top 400 loan brokers and information on 4,000 brokers intotal. Also available: top broker producers. For information on the mortgage broker database e-mail:
