Pre-migration untagged articles

The European Securitisation Forum (ESF) has announced a draft of its CDO data file format. This is a standardised format for the data files of a CDO’s performance that are regularly sent to investors by trustees.

The US Federal Reserve is leading the charge to alleviate liquidity pressures in the international financial system.

Goldman Sachs is not a firm which you have to like or take home as a cuddly toy. Goldman bankers are sometimes too smug for their own good and they took full advantage this year to rub the noses of their main competitors in the dust. One by one, their main adversaries had to be stretchered away. Merrill Lynch and Citigroup ran up the white flag of surrender and, finally, Morgan Stanley, which dreams about being as good as Goldman, fell at the water jump and had to be rescued by divers.

NORTHERN Rock endured a turbulent week — even by its own recent standards — as it revised its preferred bidder decision, revealed high SIV losses, dropped out of the FTSE 100 and underwent an early leadership change.

LANDESBANK Baden-Württemberg (LBBW) has finalised the details of its takeover of Sachsen LB, which is to go through on January 1 when LBBW will pay Eu328m for the troubled bank.

ABN AMRO and Rothschild will end their 11 year capital markets joint venture by December 30.

Assured Guaranty has reinsured $29bn of Ambac’s $556bn portfolio of financial guaranty contracts. The reinsured parts are representative of Ambac’s entire portfolios excepting mortgage or CDO exposure, which Assured is not taking on.

Bank issuers continued to use the commercial paper market to fund over the end of the year this week but were being forced to pay up to secure money for January by high Libor rates despite spreads remaining stable.

BANK OF America announced it would write off up to $3.3bn for the last quarter of 2007, at a Goldman Sachs conference in New York on Wednesday.