Pre-migration untagged articles

Beal Savings Bank initiated a lawsuit against a group of guarantors for a breach of a keep-well agreement.

In light of a perceived weaker lending standards, some speakers were focusing on the outlook for defaults and recovery. Mike Zupon, partner and managing director at The Carlyle Group, suggested the default rate going forward could be in the 2 1/2-3% range, up from this year, due to three factors deteriorating liquidity, corporate earnings and GDP. Altman agreed that defaults may be in the 2 1/2-3 1/2% range, but said that if a big LBO goes under, "all bets are off. We could have something more spectacular."

• "Is this the price is right?" -- Rob Milam, head of par loan and loan credit derivative trading for JPMorgan's North American Credit Trading business. After moderator, Reuters' Meredith Coffey asked panelists to predict average bids on Jan. 15 and Andrew Sveen, v.p. and head trader at Eaton Vance, said 98 1/2 and Jennifer Schultz Cohen, principal and bank loan trader of Oak Hill, chimed in with 98 3/4.

--Stephen Byrne, official at Goldman Sachs, on the outlook of the European market.

The following charts show the top five advancers and decliners in terms of % moves in the loan, bond and credit default swap markets for the previous week.

Asset backed commercial paper (ABCP) market participants are cautiously optimistic. That was the mood of the conference sponsored by Moody’s and the International Capital Markets Association yesterday (Thursday).

Absolute Capital Management Holdings (ACMH), which is embroiled in a court case regarding a request for the liquidation of some of its funds, has insisted it is receiving support from its investors for a restructuring of its operations.

Just when the credit default swap market was thinking it could forget all about housing and credit, it heard an encore of the subprime blues from the duet of US treasury secretary Hank Paulson and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, with a cast of supporting players.

Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s announced mass downgrades of US RMBS this week.

Were those popping noises the sound of champagne corks being opened to celebrate Merrill Lynch’s role as adviser to the victorious Royal Bank of Scotland consortium — or was it a burst from an AK47, signalling that another out-of-favour senior manager had bitten the dust?

THREE of the largest banks in the US — Bank of America, Citigroup and JP Morgan — reported their third quarter results this week. Each showed that the subprime crisis had made painful dents in their profitability and that their investment banking arms had borne the brunt of the pain.