Government/Regulation

News

LA Goes After Bulge-Bracket Banks

City claims the firms committed fraud and engaged in deceptive business practices, and also alleges the Street firms have violated multiple portions of California’s antitrust laws.

MBA Announces Leadership Changes

Changes are underway at the helm of the Mortgage Bankers Association. The industry organization's president and chief executive of seven years, Jonathan Kempner, will step down on Dec. 31. John Courson, former MBA chairman, will become president on Jan. 1, 2009.

Goldman Gets Four From UBS

Goldman Sachs has hired four senior bankers from the recently shuttered public finance group at UBS Securities, including former head of municipal banking Jeff Scruggs. Meanwhile, Mark Florian, head of Goldman's infrastructure banking team, is leaving the firm.

Barclays Names Ex-Bear MD Head Of US Infrastructure Finance

Barclays Capital named Trace McCreary as managing director and head of US infrastructure finance. He will be based in New York and will report to Rick Van Zijl, managing director and co-head of US leveraged finance.

Car Buyers Wouldn't Stand By Bankrupt Automakers

As bankruptcy talk has swirled around the US automakers, there’s been plenty of speculation about what a Chapter 11 filing would do to car sales of the affected companies. Well, one firm has tried to quantify the impact, and the numbers aren’t pretty.

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Articles

Not Rumor But Fact: Financial Stocks Rally

Struggling financial-services stocks got a much-needed boost last week, rallying on the heels of relatively good earnings from Wells Fargo and JPMorgan, and ongoing efforts by the US government to prop up the ailing sector.

UBS Will Buy Back Some Auction-Rate Securities

UBS said last Wednesday it will offer to repurchase about $3.5 billion in auction-rate securities held in its customer accounts as of last Tuesday.

True That

Just when you thought things couldn't get any worse--at least in the land of cold, hard facts like a quarter-of-a-trillion-dollars in bank write-downs, a complete breakdown of risk-management capabilities and a credit crisis that still may be closer to its beginning than its end--along comes the maddeningly, utterly embarrassing fiasco that is our regulators focusing on gossip.

CSI: Wall Street

In the days after the July 4 weekend, Wall Street offered its own fireworks display. US housing agencies saw the value of their shares drop to historic lows and concerns cropped up about their ability to continue to readily turn to the capital markets, prompting the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve to make explicit what was once implicit: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have the backing of the US government. The concerns about the financial health of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and anxieties about California lender IndyMac drove US Treasury yields lower. Borrowing costs for home loans were little changed and, in some cases, increased, yet another sign that business on Mainstreet USA was being affected by the credit market mess in a way that the US economy could not afford.

Covered Bonds, Uncovered

Expect to hear and read this term much more often: 'covered bonds.' The traditionally European asset class, designed to protect investors in the event of issuer collapses, could become a major source of financing in the US market, if the government has its way.

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