Editor’s Letter

This winter issue is a first-of-a-kind project for this journal. It is a double-sized issue consisting of 25 panel discussion and presentation summaries involving 50 authors from the ABS East Conference held October 16-18,2011, in Miami Beach.

A month before the conference I invited every panel participant to submit material and immediately after the conference I invited every panel as a group to submit a brief, concise discussion summary. For those with slide presentations, I requested an abstract and introduction at the beginning and whatever additional explanation would help the reader understand the slides. While naturally I was disappointed that I couldn’t persuade a number of panels and presenters to submit material, I am very pleased with the depth and breadth of material in this issue. I think every reader in this field will find a lot of interesting and informative subject matter and invite you to peruse the brief abstracts in the table of contents.

The issue is divided into sections as usual and works more or less from the general to the specific. We start our section on the economic, regulatory, and legal environment with an overview of the economy as it affects securitization, specifically mortgage-backed securities, from Mark Fleming, followed by some observations from Michael Macaluso about the way securitization is regaining its footing after the financial crisis. Jason Kravitt’s panel summary comments on likely developments related to the regulatory initiatives underway. Lisa Filomia-Aktas provides a summary of the new reporting requirements under the Dodd–Frank Act. Tim Mohan, Jim Croke, Robert Lockner, and Peter Manbeck provide comprehensive material on regulatory capital and liquidity requirements for securitizations, including the complicated Basel 2.5 and Basel III proposals. Jay Tambe, Susan DiCicco, Scott Drosdick, Zachary Rosenbaum, Joel Telpner, and Matthew Chow provide a comprehensive summary of recent litigation related to securitization.

The next section is a conference overview covering 17 panel discussions and presentations from three of the most speedy, knowledgeable, and accurate note-takers I have ever seen—Mark Adelson, Francis Parisi, and Henry Albulescu. Then we have panel discussion summaries and presentations covering a range of asset classes, starting in the RMBS area with comments on the future of housing and government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) from Jim Lockhart, Laurie Goodman, and Landon Parsons, followed by comments on RMBS from the credit risk perspective by Suzanne Mistretta and Andy Davidson, from the trading and research perspective by Laurie Goodman and Paul Nikodem, and from the loan modification perspective by Michael Bradley. Max Bronzwaer makes some interesting comparisons of housing finance in the Netherlands and the U.S. before, during, and after the financial crisis similar to a Canadian–U.S. comparison we ran in the Journal’s Summer 2010 issue.

We have current outlooks on CMBS from Brian Lancaster and Michael Gambro, on ABS from Kishore Yalamanchili, credit card ABS from John Hwang and Tamer El-Rayess, student loan ABS from Vince Sampson, ABCP from Carol Hitselberger, and CLOs from Justin Pauley. Ron Borod provides a summary of his panel discussion on the esoteric asset classes in Q&A format, and John Joshi gives us a report on the progress of renewable energy securitization.

The final section on analytic, valuation, rating, and pricing tools starts with two co-written panel discussion and presentation summaries by Brian Linde, Suhrud Dagli, and Raj Dosaj and by Tim Martin, Gunnar Blix, and Juan Carlos Calcagno covering the important recent advances in loan-level and consumer credit data and analytics for RMBS. Then Mahesh Kotecha, Douglas Murray, Robert Dobilas, Jerry van Koolbergen, James Midanek, and Eric Williamson comment on current issues and controversies related to both traditional and alternate ratings for structured securities. Finally, Kevin Samborn and Jay Guo summarize their panel discussion on the bond valuation process and transparency, methodology, and compliance issues related to bond pricing vendors.

Many thanks to our 50 fine contributors; to Jade Friedensohn, Andrew O’Donnell, and Molly McGuire of the IMN staff; to our group publisher Allison Adams and former publisher Eric Hall; to our production team Harry Katz and Deborah Brouwer; to our advertising director Dave Blide; to our copyeditor Christine Kemper; and to our production house manager Ganesan for all the negotiations, hard work, and steely nerves under deadline pressure that made this project happen on time—including putting up with an editor who wouldn’t stop hounding contributors and bringing in material until long after the original production deadline and dangerously close to the printer’s deadline.

Henry A. Davis

Editor

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