With BofA out of the correspondent market for almost a year, and with other aggregators paying paltry sums for the ‘servicing released premium,’ many mid-sized FHA lenders want to become direct issuers.

Newtek Business Services, a nonbank financial firm that lends to small businesses, has assumed the servicing of a portfolio of loans originated by Aurora Bank FSB, which are in a securitization trust established in 2006.

It appears that other bidders will make a run at Residential Capital Corp. on Tuesday and Wednesday when the firm is auctioned off by a federal bankruptcy trustee.

Royal Bank of Canada agreed to buy Ally Financial's Canadian auto-finance and deposit business in a cash deal providing $4.1 billion in proceeds to Ally.

In Europe, efforts by out-of-money investors has thwarted recovery efforts by senior bondholders in troubled CMBS deals, according to a Fitch Ratings report published today.

Student loan player First Marblehead Corporation has been accumulating assets over the past two years as collateral for a potential return to the ABS market, said Gary Santo, a managing director at the firm, on the sidelines of ABS East.

Despite being the ABS market's current darling, a speaker at ABS East saw a potential bubble forming in the subprime auto segment.

Speakers harped on two topics in particular: the qualified residential mortgage rule and what they see as the unfair advantage that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac still enjoy over the private-label RMBS market.

The fiscal cliff being faced by our government at the end of the year is probably the most chilling macro-economic risk, ABS East panelists said.

While the recovery of the housing market is on firm footing, house prices in aggregate are unlikely to rise quickly, participants say.

European securitizations are likely to face more stringent capital requirements as the Basel Committee examines how these transactions are regulated.

Finacity Corporation structured a $150 million securitization for the Manitowoc Company.