Commentaries
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The rock-bottom bar in CMBS
There’s a bit of a bit of buzz surrounding what could be the first CMBS deal in more than a year. Bloomberg is carrying a story about how Goldman Sachs will sell the first bond that would be eligible under the Fed’s TALF program.
But the buzz should be more about how the bar has fallen so low in commercial real estate financing.
From Bloomberg:
Goldman Sachs Group Inc., seeking to take advantage of an untapped Federal Reserve program, may sell the first commercial-mortgage bond since June 2008, backed by a $400 million loan to an Ohio property owner.
The five-year loan to Developers Diversified Realty Corp. made by a unit of the New York-based bank is secured by 28 shopping centers. It will be used to repay debt on those properties and others, and to reduce the outstanding amounts of credit facilities, Developers Diversified said yesterday in a statement.
Does securitization actually lower credit costs?
Just reading more of Fed Governor Tarullo’s speech and he has this to say about securitization markets:
There were undoubtedly many imprudent, even reckless, practices associated with the securitization process, particularly with respect to some exotic instruments whose risk could not be understood even by their creators. There is little to lament in their disappearance. But securitization is not in and of itself a bad thing. On the contrary, a well-functioning system for securitizing well-underwritten loans can make capital available at lower cost to businesses, homeowners, and retail consumers. The failure of many relatively straightforward securitization markets to revive without government support may be explained simply as a hangover from the excesses and still-encumbered assets of the pre-crisis period. Just as some have restarted, perhaps others will follow as markets for the underlying assets improve. But I will confess to some concern that there has not already been greater activity.
The commitments committee
The bursting of the dot-com bubble pales in comparision to the financial crisis. In retrospect, it seems a comic-book lesson about the all-too-obvious consequences of irrational exuberance: What were they thinking?
Yet the Internet bubble was in many ways a warm-up for the much larger credit bubble. The common thread, Jonathan Knee, a senior managing director at Evercore Partners, writes in DealBook, is the enabling role played by financial institutions.
Securitization survives the fall
A year after the government’s seizure of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and AIG , not to mention the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers that sent the global financial system into a tailspin, very little has changed to prevent debt from being sliced and diced, again and again.
This is a mistake. Although there were many factors contributing to the downfall of the global financial system, the repackaging of toxic debt into esoteric financial products was at the heart of the credit crisis when it erupted in 2007.
The Re-REMIC limit
The repackaging of commercial real estate mortgage-backed securities made a splash in July as banks offered investors panicked by looming ratings downgrades better protection against potential losses. But, it turns out that there’s only been 9 such deals rated by Moody’s, for a total of around $1.2 billion, with Credit Swisse doing three of them.
That’s not a huge amount for a $700 billion market and I suspect the reason is there’s just not that many natural buyers for the riskier, or junior, pieces that need to be sold in a re-REMIC. Repackaging doesn’t magically make the risk go away. What it does is split an existing tranche in two so one piece is better protected while the second is worse off. Who wants to buy the worse off piece when the outlook for commercial real estate is so awful.
British Land’s best assets – its liabilities
British Land is in a good position to take advantage of opportunities. We know because the chairman told us. Why then, is he supposed to be contemplating selling a stake in London office complex Broadgate to Blackstone?
Given how far prices have fallen, the timing looks odd, especially for a company that claims to be in a solid financial position. However, it may make more sense than it appears to. Bank lending and property markets are soft, but the peculiarities of Broadgate’s debt structure may make it worth while for both sides.
The CMBS, re-Remic muddle
FT’s Alphaville has a great post on re-Remics and the push to make them respectable, at least in the eyes of the Federal Reserve and its TALF program.
If the Fed were to accept repackaged CMBS in its TALF program, it would go a long way in feeding the securitization machine that Wall Street banks are eager to jump start. But is that a good thing? The re-Remics are essentially repacking problem CMBS bond deals so they can create a “bullet-proof” AAA slice for investors who don’t want to have to worry about downgrades. If you’re thinking you’ve seen this movie before, you’re not alone.
When the tough gets going, securitize!
The FT has a report that banks are looking to slice and dice risky assets on their balance sheet so they can unload some of the capital-gobbling securities to investors. The banks argue that this type of securitization is different than those CDOs that helped suck the financial system into a sinkhole since it doesn’t rely on leverage and it’s more transparent.
The appeal for the banks is obvious. From the FT:
BarCap’s structures involve the pooling of assets from several clients into a secured financial product that can be sold on to other investors and rated by a credit rating agency, potentially reducing the capital allocated against the assets by between 10 per cent and 50 per cent.
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The Wall
