Securitization

The Carlyle Group and Warburg Pincus have agreed to acquire the global credit ratings agency DBRS.

Trustees for mortgage bond investors asked a New York court to approve a $1.13 billion settlement reached in April with Citigroup Inc. as the bank seeks to resolve liabilities for loans it packaged and sold in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis.

A former Jefferies & Co. managing director convicted of fraud for lying to customers about the price of mortgage-backed securities sued the AllianceBernstein Holding LP executive who reported him.

Fannie Mae veteran Karen Pallotta has joined Redwood Trust's board of directors. Pallotta's recent role at Fannie was as executive vice president of the single-family credit guaranty business, which she assumed during the height of the financial crisis.

Seer Capital Management is getting more bullish on U.S. commercial real estate. The $2.1 billion hedge fund firm, started by ex-Deutsche Bank AG executive Phillip Weingord, is planning a fund dedicated solely to buying the riskiest pieces of bonds backed by commercial properties, according to a presentation, a copy of which was obtained by Bloomberg News.

Yields on government-backed mortgage securities narrowed to the least relative to benchmark debt in more than two years, cushioning the blow of a slump in Treasuries for homebuyers.

The expiration of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Assistance program on Dec. 31 will have "repercussions" for the economy, according to Fitch Ratings.

JPMorgan Securities is arranging a $353 million RMBS securitizing 677 prime pre-crisis mortgages originated by Merrill Lynch Credit Corp.

Bank of America Corp. and US Bancorp were sued by the agency that oversees federal credit unions, which claimed the banks failed as trustees over securities backed by home mortgages that defaulted after the 2008 credit crisis.

Bill Ackman, founder of Pershing Square Capital Management, said he's added "meaningfully" to his bets on U.S. mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the past two weeks.

The Russian ruble is in freefall — it's down more than 50% since January — and interest rates are climbing on the back of the Bank of Russia's aggressive efforts to shore up the embattled currency.

The deal resolved claims relating to the underwriting and servicing of loans in more than 300 residential mortgage-backed securitization trusts.

A new report suggests that the credit quality of residential mortgage-backed securities will continue to improve in 2015.

The amount of commercial and multifamily mortgage debt outstanding rose to a record high in the third quarter, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

HUD officials had taken a neutral position on whether FHA financing would be available for loans that were seized by cities and written down to their current appraised value.

Commercial mortgage-backed securities risk as measured by an index of underwriting and macroeconomic variables is up 11 points from 2013. That's still below its 2007 level, a researcher noted Thursday.

A bankruptcy court judge sunk investors' hopes in their latest lawsuit against Lehman Brothers, which they claim broke contracts in junk mortgage-backed securities sold during the bubble years.

New Residential Mortgage priced $504 million of bonds backed by a pool of mostly reperforming residential mortgages, according to Standard & Poor's.

For the first time, there is a subservicer, Cenlar FSB, handling the servicing function for more than $200 billion in mortgage loans.

State housing finance authorities will deleverage their bond programs, build equity and improve financial ratios, according to Fitch Ratings.