The ASF 2012 Conference held last month in Las Vegas was a success by any measure and attracted an impressive number of attendees (4,500).  Attendees were happy to escape New York and other chilly locales and attend some great panel discussions on securitization, regulatory developments and mortgage servicing (or, for some, at least read about those panels the next morning on their iPhones while waiting to tee off).  The owners of the Aria will definitely be able to make their mortgage payment this month with all of the money left behind by ASF attendees. 

My Dechert colleagues and I who attended the Conference cover almost all of the securitized asset classes.  As I described in my blog from the Conference, your particular view of the Conference depends largely on what asset class you focus on in your practice – autos and CLOs, for example, look very strong.  As someone who spent unimaginable amounts of hours of my pre-credit crisis life drafting RMBS deal documents, I yearn for the return of the public RMBS deals  – and not just because I miss spending my days (and most nights) trying to describe in “Plain English” the waterfall on a multi-group negative amortization deal.  I truly believe that we can’t have a meaningful recovery in the housing market without the return of private-label RMBS.  But regardless of what particular asset type you follow, there was undeniably a lot of buzz surrounding a couple of topics. Continue Reading Leaving Las Vegas: Further Thoughts on the ASF 2012 Conference