Sector developments and company hires

CDO transfer
CVP CLO Manager has resigned as investment manager to the CVP Cascade CLO-1 and CLO-2 transactions. It has been replaced by Barings. For more CDO manager transfers, see SCI’s database.

Defeasance surge
US CMBS 2.0 defeasance volume at end-3Q19 totalled US$10.89bn across 694 loans, exceeding the 2018 full-year total of US$10.88bn across 620 loans, according to Fitch. The pace of defeasance has recently surged, following the July Federal Reserve interest rate cut. In Q3, US$3.92bn was defeased across 224 loans, compared to US$2.61bn across 183 loans in 2Q19. By property type, multifamily loans dominated, at 52% of year-to-date defeasance volume. Meanwhile, office defeasance volume spiked in September, due to the defeasance of the US$650m Bank of America Tower at One Bryant Park loan (securitised in OBP 2010-OBP).

RFC on disclosures
The US SEC is seeking feedback on whether its 2014 ABS rules are a significant contributing factor to the absence of SEC-registered RMBS offerings since that time. By contrast, in the five years ended 30 June 2019, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have issued an aggregate of approximately US$4.47trn in face amount of RMBS. The Commission notes that potential issuers of SEC-registered RMBS have expressed concerns regarding the scope and interpretation of asset-level disclosure requirements. For example, its rules require 270 data points for each asset in an SEC-registered RMBS offering, while GSE RMBS offerings generally have approximately 100 data points for each asset. The Treasury Department’s recent housing reform plan recommended that the Commission review the RMBS asset-level disclosure requirements to assess the number of required reporting fields and to clarify the defined terms for SEC-registered private-label securitisations.