Tag Archives: Dodd-Frank

The Coming Regulatory Deluge (With Apologies to Louis XV):  Smells Like Opportunity to Me

Events keep happening that really do make it clear that we are about to enter a period of enhanced regulatory intrusion into the financial services space.  Shocking!  And entirely unexpected, right?  (You’re winning, sir)  While that is in many respects troubling, it’s also the stuff of opportunity for the creative and nimble.  I’ll explain.… Continue Reading

Ratings Agencies in the Crosshairs

Back in the febrile, hyperventilated times that birthed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (blessedly known simply as Dodd-Frank), one of the issues that energized the activists’ intent on “fixing” what was wrong was the notion that the ratings agencies were complicit in the overpricing of financial assets.  In a “want for … Continue Reading

The Deep State, Area 51, Elvis Sightings and the Illuminati: Complexity is the New Mythos-Maker

The shear complexity of the modern world makes fools of us all. It’s no wonder that conspiracy theories, just plain weird ideas and deeply counterfactual views abound these days. We don’t like to be bewildered or shocked by unexplainable events, and, regrettably we confront plenty of these every day. Confronted with the inexplicable, it is … Continue Reading

Repost: In Defense of Securitization – Unto the Breach or Close the Wall Up with Our Dead (with Apologies to Mr. Shakespeare)

We published the below commentary, In Defense of Securitization, last week and we are republishing it today as, let’s face it, we’re all getting very French, and many of us took most of last week off.  Enjoy, if that’s the right word. Returning to the theme of my most recent commentary entitled God Hates Securitization, … Continue Reading

In Defense of Securitization – Unto the Breach or Close the Wall Up with Our Dead (with Apologies to Mr. Shakespeare)

Returning to the theme of my most recent commentary entitled God Hates Securitization, I want to elaborate on the point I made there (yes, if you stuck with me all the way through to the end, there was a point):  We need to fight the narrative that banking, finance and securitization are evil.  I am … Continue Reading

Third Party Purchaser Agreements Don’t Destroy Sale Treatment: A Victory for the Unintended Consequences Resistance

Every once in a while we get some good news around the capital markets hood and this is one of those times.  Admittedly, all we’re doing here is fixing a problem which was one of the unintended consequences of the Dodd-Frank regulatory regime and just gets us back to where we thought we were before … Continue Reading

CrunchedCredit.com’s 8th Annual Golden Turkey Awards

As we look back each November to bestow the year’s crop of Golden Turkeys to the silliest and most annoying instances of regulatory overreach, legislative inanity, governmental misfeasance or the mere idiotic behavior of people without any help from the government apparatchiki, there’s always a glorious excess of candidates. This whole commentary thing would be … Continue Reading

HVCRE Reform is HOT HOT HOT: Pittenger Bill Progresses to Senate

Add HVCRE reform to the list of things that have bi-partisan support (currently on the list: flag pins and banning the use of Twitter in the White House). On Tuesday, the House passed (with bi-partisan support…which should bolster its chances of passing in the Senate) H.R.2148 – Clarifying Commercial Real Estate Loans, otherwise known as … Continue Reading

Treasury Report on the Capital Markets: A New Day

Or maybe not.  At the outset, let’s give credit where credit is due.  It was gratifying to read a governmental missive on the capital markets that made sense, showed an actual grasp of how markets function and an awareness of the issues confronting capital formation.  Best damn thing I ever read coming out of the … Continue Reading

Fun With GAAP:  CMBS at Risk

Here’s a headline for you:  We don’t know if a conventional CMBS securitization where risk retention bonds are retained by a B-buyer under an industry standard third party purchaser agreement achieves accounting sale treatment.  Failure of accounting sale treatment means the selling bank cannot book the gain and does not derecognize the underlying loans resulting … Continue Reading

Direct Issuance is Here – A New Paradigm for Single Asset Single Borrower (SASB) Securitization

A standalone securitization of a portfolio of properties closed in June. To our knowledge, this was the first transaction in recent memory done in a direct issuance format.  In this case, direct issuance means that the sponsor organized the lender and the depositor as well as a borrower and crafted the loan between the lender and … Continue Reading

Alternative Facts? A World Without Dodd-Frank and Basel III

What if Dodd-Frank and Basel III were to largely go away? Eliminating Dodd-Frank has been a hobbyhorse of Representative Hensarling, the chair of the House Services Committee, for several years and has figured prominently in President Trump’s campaign talking points. But the conventional wisdom has been that any sort of transformational uprooting of the Dodd-Frank … Continue Reading

Dechert’s Financial Regulation Reform Tracker: An Essential Tool for an Uncertain Time

The Trump administration and Republican Congress have big plans for the next four years.  The financial industry could face a complete policy 180 faster than the POTUS can tweet out 140 characters.  Or a delicately crafted executive order could have no actual real world impact at all. To keep up with it all, we at … Continue Reading

A Report From the Risk Retention Front-Lines

Your correspondent is fresh from the front-lines of the risk retention wars where great armies of lawyers, bankers and advisers are fixedly staring at each other, staring out of the redoubts of their respective defensive crouches in a complex, multidimensional chess game.  All are fervently hoping against hope that something or someone does something to … Continue Reading

Why Regulation Fails

I’d like everyone to go out and buy a copy of Professor Paul Mahoney’s slender new book, Wasting a Crisis – Why Securities Regulation Fails.  Paul is a brilliant guy.  Until this spring, he was the dean of the University of Virginia School of Law where he is the David and Mary Harrison Distinguished Professor … Continue Reading

Dodd-Frank Rulemaking Developments by the Fed for Fed-Supervised Insurance Firms

The Dodd-Frank Act was a cornucopia of opportunity for rule writers. To the regulatory community, this was almost a bottomless candy jar. And so our regulatory apparatchiki began to beaver away and produced, to date, something like 22,000 pages of rules which purport to moderate or prevent bad behavior by all those nasty institutions perceived … Continue Reading
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