Tag Archives: Mortgage-Backed Securities

FHFA alleges it suffered monumental losses when the sponsor of the mortgage-backed securities, Tokyo-based Nomura, and the securities' underwriter, Royal Bank of Scotland, did not follow underwriting guidelines on 68 percent of a sample of a bundle of securities backing more than $2 billion worth of mortgages sold to the GSEs prior to the financial crisis of 2008.

Today’s housing market barely resembles the market that existed five or even four years ago, much less the environment that was in place when Ginnie Mae was created in 1968 or when it issued the world’s first mortgage-backed security (MBS) in 1970.

An independent monitor verified in his fourth report on JPMorgan Chase's progress under its November 2013 settlement with the government over the packaging and selling of faulty residential mortgage-backed securities that the bank has paid more than half of the $4 billion amount it agreed to pay toward consumer relief, according to an announcement from independent monitor Joseph A. Smith, Jr. on Thursday.

When he was asked if Fannie Mae could have predicted the magnitude of the housing crash, Mudd said the GSE's predictions "undershot" what eventually happened and that to his knowledge, no one at Fannie Mae could have accurately predicted the extent of the housing crisis.

The single-family serious delinquency rate for Fannie Mae in February fell another three basis points down to 1.83 percent after dropping to a nine-year low of 1.86 percent in January. Fannie Mae's single-family serious delinquency rate has declined every quarter since the first quarter of 2010 due to a number of reasons that include foreclosure alternatives, home retention solutions, completed foreclosures, improved loan payment performance, and acquisitions of loans with stronger credit profiles.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday overturned a decision by an appeals court and granted a writ of certiorari to investors of ING Group, allowing them to continue with their class action suit against ING that accuses the Dutch bank of withholding information about the riskiness of its mortgage-backed securities in the run-up to the financial crisis.

Better Markets, a non-profit Wall Street reforms advocate based in Washington, D.C., filed a suit against the DOJ in February 2014 alleging that the settlement Chase agreed to with the DOJ in November 2013 to settle claims that Chase sold toxic mortgage-backed securities in the run-up to the financial crisis, was "unlawful" and that the settlement had granted the megabank immunity without sufficient judicial review.

Counsel's Corner is an ongoing series in which DS News talks with default servicing attorneys around the country about the most pressing issues facing the default servicing industry. This installment features Stacey Slaughter, partner with Robins Kaplan.

Nomura, which is headquartered in Japan and is one of the world's biggest banks, is the first financial institution to go to trial out of the 18 lenders FHFA sued in 2011 to recoup U.S. taxpayer costs following the government's $188 billion bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2008, after which the government seized control of both Enterprises.

The institutional investors, including affiliates of investment manager BlackRock Inc. and Pacific Investment Management Company LLC, had objected to the settlement, saying it excludes them from the class, while simultaneously releasing their claims against U.S. Bank in a derivative action. The judge said the terms of the agreement didn’t bar those investors' claims.