-
HSBC bankers are mourning the retirement of man so famous he needs no name — he is simply “that Irish guy who tells you when the fire alarm is about to be tested”.
-
HSBC’s Souhail Mahjour, one of the CEEMEA syndicate gang’s last remaining bachelors, has finally taken himself off the market. Drawing on his emerging market expertise, Souhail whisked his beloved off to Bagan (it’s in the Mandalay region of Burma, as if you didn’t already know) and with a glorious sunrise as his backdrop, he dropped to one knee and sealed the deal.
-
The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision’s inclusion of certain RMBS in the second tier of bank liquidity buckets is a welcome reprieve for the ABS market. But the same committee’s updated capital risk weightings, published at the end of last year, are likely to curb a flood of new demand for RMBS as banks also face lower returns on capital held against securitisations.
-
By Shanker Merchant, managing director in investment banking at CastleOak Securities, a New York-based boutique investment bank. -
As if any further evidence were needed, a new report by Fitch has offered another slug of support for the reputation of European RMBS. The continent's regulators need to start giving the product the credit it deserves.
-
It's hard to make banks adhere to CMBS disclosure standards if investors are happy to ignore them. The buyside only has itself to blame for not insisting on proper transparency.
-
Two European CMBS deals have been issued in little over a week — matching the total number of deals that have been issued since the subprime crisis began. This is clearly a positive sign, but it does not mean the market is now open for business. It will be many more years before a properly functioning market returns.
-
Despite a slowly healing U.S. office property market, the commercial mortgage-backed securities office sector continues to struggle.
-
As Basel III approaches, investors should expect to see more deals like VTB’s hybrid capital deal. They need to get used the potential variables that such trades bring.
