After a night of fun at Dechert’s party at the SLS Hotel, many of us needed a pick-me-up on Tuesday morning. Those of us that dragged ourselves out of bed and into the roundtable discussion on market issues and opportunities were not disappointed. The quick hitting discussion by over two dozen industry insiders, including Crunched Credit’s own Rick Jones, provided no lack of entertainment or insight into the current state of the industry.
Continue Reading...The Loews Hotel buzzed with optimism on the first day of the CREFC January conference, as over 1,300 attendees descended on South Beach. After catching up with many friends, the Monday morning session began with lively meetings of the Agency Investors Forum, the High Yield and Investment Forum, the Issuers Forum and the Portfolio Lenders Forum. Panelists at the forums expressed a general sense of optimism for 2013 and expect the general market trends of 2012 to continue into 2013.
Continue Reading...Next week, hundreds of industry participants will make their way to our Nation’s capital for CREFC’s Annual Conference.
The Conference promises to provide a forum to explore the effect of increasing financial instability in the Eurozone as well as the opportunity to develop important industry initiatives. CREFC’s PSA Task Force will kick things off on Monday morning with a discussion of the PSA simplification project (a project designed to standardize and simplify the servicing mechanics in pooling and servicing agreements). Based on feedback from issuers during January’s Conference, the focus of the Task Force has shifted from developing a form Article III to creating proposed guidelines and language intended to work with issuers’ existing form documentation. Later in the day, the Issuer’s forum will discuss a number of topics impacting CMBS issuance, including market outlook, market risks and regulatory changes. The Conference’s keynote address will come from Pulitzer Prize-winning political columnist George F. Will, who will be sure to offer a unique viewpoint of the election-year political landscape.
On Monday evening, Conference Co-Chair Rick Jones and the balance of the Dechert contingent will host clients and colleagues for dinner at the top of the Hay Adams. We look forward to the opportunity to catch up with our friends. Stewart McQueen and Matt Ginsburg will be providing daily updates next week from the conference.
By: Stewart McQueen
The image of the cresting wave looming behind the dais in the Loews' Americana Salon during Douglas Holtz-Eakin’s keynote address posed a central, if unintended, question that was addressed by more than one speaker during the three-day conference. Are we riding a wave to recovery or facing a deluge of maturing debt? For most of the 1,200 industry participants that occupied Miami’s South Beach for CREFC’s annual January conference last week, there seems to be no certain answer (other than almost unanimous agreement that South Beach is a better Winter destination than our Nation's Capitol).
Continue Reading...Over a thousand lenders, borrowers, servicers, lawyers and other service providers have descended on Miami for three days of networking, meeting and doing things you just can't do in DC. After a Sunday spent checking in, catching up and Tebowing, the conference kicked off in earnest this morning. I started my day with a PSA Task Force meeting - an important industry initiative. The committee is working hard to develop a standardized format for the more mechanical aspects of a pooling and servicing agreement, with an eye toward making loans work for borrowers and servicers alike (Rick offered some prescient comments regarding the importance of emphasizing the exercise as something that will, at the end of the day, make the servicing of securitized loans more efficient and user friendly). As I type, I'm listening to the opening general session, an overview of CRE fundamentals and where we are in the cycle (the common themes being the effect of the jobless recovery and the specter of $700 billion or so of debt maturing in the next 24 months). Tonight, Dechert will welcome over two hundred clients and colleagues for dinner at Asia de Cuba - we are looking forward to a great opportunity to talk to our friends. Tomorrow's schedule is similarly packed, highlighted by a keynote address by Douglas Holtz-Eakin. We will continue to blog from the conference.
By Matthew Clark.
Here in Boston, we've had a busy but productive week since the CREFC June Convention culminated –punctuated with more than a million hockey fans witnessing a parade of Duck Boats waddle through the Back Bay. The Convention itself saw a smaller (albeit similarly excitable) parade of lenders, borrowers, servicers and other industry participants descend on Manhattan for two days of networking, learning and discussion.
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