Ambac Rocky Balboa oder chapter 11
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J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. is employing an unusual argument in its new legal fight with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman: The prosecutor didn't do his own work.
On Monday, Mr. Schneiderman's office filed a civil lawsuit alleging widespread fraud by the company's Bear Stearns Cos. unit in the sale of residential mortgage-backed securities. The case is the first from a group of federal and state prosecutors and regulators formed by President Barack Obama.
A J.P. Morgan spokesman said the case, brought under the umbrella of the ...
http://online.wsj.com/article/...1005297490.html?ru=MKTW&mod=MKTW
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Hi,
das war neu unter Punkt 1.
"KINGSTON, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 30, 2012-- Ambac Financial Group, Inc. and Ambac Assurance Corporation, (the “Companies”), in response to the effects of Hurricane Sandy, have indefinitely closed their headquarters at One State Street Plaza, New York, New York. The Companies have relocated their headquarters to their disaster recovery site in Kingston, New York."
MfG
After more than two years dominating a shrinking municipal bond-insurance market, Wilbur Ross is looking forward to some competition.
The 74-year-old billionaire, who owns 10.2 percent of Assured Guaranty Ltd. (AGO), says the arrival of Build America Mutual Assurance Co. signals the viability of a business that was left for dead after credit markets collapsed in 2008, devastating the U.S. financial system and ushering in the worst recession since the Great Depression.
Last year, 5.2 percent of the $290 billion of muni debt sold in the U.S. was insured, all by Assured, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The protection, which localities use to lower borrowing costs, once covered half the bonds offered by U.S. states and local governments.
“Being a one-horse industry was a very hard thing,” Ross said in an interview last month at Bloomberg’s New York headquarters. “Two sales forces out there promoting the industry is a very good thing.”
Those sales staffs face a challenge in persuading municipalities that were burned by bond insurance why they need the product when they’ve grown accustomed to borrowing without it. The job has been made tougher by the Federal Reserve’s policy of keeping its benchmark interest rate near zero through at least mid-2015. Municipalities are borrowing at the lowest rates in a generation even without insurance.
Issuer’s Savings
Yields on 10-year general-obligation bonds rated BBB, the second-lowest investment grade from Standard & Poor’s, set a record low of 3.01 percent this month, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The bonds’ extra yield over AAAs fell to 1.1 percentage points on Aug. 28, the smallest since 2008.
Lower-rated issuers can reduce their interest costs through insurance, which gives their borrowing the same credit rating as the insurer. The muni insurance arm of Assured is rated AA- by S&P and Aa3 by Moody’s Investors Service, the fourth-highest grades from both.
Protection from Assured Guaranty Municipal Corp., which is based in New York, saves issuers 0.10 percentage point to 0.25 percentage point in interest cost compared with uninsured bonds, according to an August report from William Clark, a Hartford, Connecticut-based analyst at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods Inc. The average premium issuers paid in 2011 was 0.65 percentage point of total debt service, up from 0.37 point in 2006, according to KBW.
“One of the critical components of our contract, which is saving you financing costs, has been kind of taken away by how the Fed has been managing monetary policy,” Assured Guaranty Chief Executive Officer Dominic Frederico said at a conference sponsored by KBW last month.
Insurer’s Risk
Bankruptcies in the past year by Jefferson County, Alabama, and Stockton, California, along with defaults by cities such as Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, underscore the risk of insuring local bonds.
Assured guarantees a combined $1 billion of Jefferson County, Stockton and Harrisburg bonds, with 70 percent of the total coming from Jefferson County, according to KBW. Assured estimates losses in the Alabama county at $50 million. The insurer has $313 million in reserves related to its public- finance risks and $13 billion in claims-paying resources, according to KBW.
About $6.3 billion of the nearly $450 billion of public- finance obligations Assured has insured is rated below investment grade, according to KBW.
Industry Survivor
During the financial crisis, companies including MBIA Inc. (MBI) and Ambac Assurance Corp. were stripped of their top credit ratings because of losses on guarantees of subprime-mortgage- backed debt. Municipalities that had bond insurance from the companies saw interest rates on their floating-rate debt skyrocket. Investors holding insured securities suffered as prices fell.
Assured managed to survive, in part as it mostly avoided the losses that felled its competitors. Assured’s stock has returned about 12.3 percent this year, including dividends, while the Russell 1000 Financial Services index has earned 25.6 percent.
“What happened to the insurance companies scared the bejesus out of everybody,” said Matt Dalton, who oversees $1.2 billion of munis as chief executive officer of Belle Haven Investments Inc. in White Plains, New York.
First Deal
“Adding competition in this interest-rate environment with an investor base that has lost belief in insurance for the most part isn’t good,” he said.
Build America Mutual, or BAM, based in New York, insured its first deal last month, a $10 million sale by Pennsylvania’s York Suburban School District. It became the first new company to guarantee munis since Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Assurance Corp. entered the market in 2007. Berkshire has stopped writing policies.
BAM, which has $500 million in claims-paying resources, is rated AA by S&P, one level above Assured.
“Within a calendar year of our opening, if we insured 3 percent of the market we could consider that successful,” BAM Chairman Robert Cochran said on Oct. 11 at a conference in Chicago. “We’ll see where market demand takes us.”
S&P estimated in a July 23 report that BAM may insure $12 billion of bonds in its first year.
Shrinking Target
While BAM may take market share from Assured, its entrance into the business could restore legitimacy to bond insurance and help expand the industry, said Clark at KBW.
“Having 100 percent of market share of a market that keeps shrinking is probably not the best thing in the world,” Clark said in a telephone interview. He has a 12-month price target of $16, compared with $14.47 at 4:15 p.m. New York time yesterday.
Analysts such as David Veno at S&P in New York predict that insured bonds may eventually rebound to account for more new issuance. There are enough smaller, infrequent borrowers to support Assured and BAM and restore insurance to as much as 30 percent of sales, he wrote in a July 23 report.
The different underwriting strategies of Assured and Build America “support the notion that total insured new-issue paper may increase,” he wrote.
As a mutual insurer, issuers who buy policies, not stockholders, will own BAM. The company will focus on general- obligation debt and so-called essential service bonds backed by specific revenue sources such as tolls.
Mutually Owned
BAM’s mutual structure allows its cash to grow as each new policyholder contributes, reducing the need for external capital.
However, as a startup, BAM may lose money initially and have less appeal to issuers and investors because it’s not an established player, Clark wrote in an August report when he started covering Assured’s stock.
On the downside for Assured, Moody’s has its financial strength rating on negative watch because it views new business opportunities as limited.
Clark, who predicts Moody’s will lower Assured’s rating, said a reduction won’t affect its business.
“People who are still using bond insurance now are going to be OK with a AA- stable rating from S&P, which is only one level below BAM’s rating and isn’t a significant disadvantage,” he said.
In the $3.7 trillion muni market yesterday, benchmark 10- year tax-exempts yielded 1.66 percent, compared with about 1.82 percent for similar-maturity Treasuries, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
Treasuries prices fell following a jump in new-home construction. That left the interest rate on 10-year local debt at about 91 percent of the federal yield, the lowest since February. Investors look at the ratio to gauge relative value between the two asset classes. The lower it is, the more expensive munis are compared with Treasuries.
Following is a pending sale:
CALIFORNIA plans to sell about $550 million in general- obligation refunding bonds as soon as Oct. 23, according to the state treasurer’s website. The debt will be sold via auction. (Added Oct. 15)
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-18/...wakening-muni-credit.html
A common refrain from the financial crisis is that poor disclosure was a big contributor, if not the cause, of the financial crisis. Buyers of even the most complicated financial instruments were misled or were not provided full information concerning their investments. The results were catastrophic when the mortgage market crashed.
The story sounds convenient: investors were deceived! That would imply that all we need to do to prevent a similar problem in the future is to provide better disclosure.
The problem is that when you actually look at the documents from some of the troubled investments during the financial crisis, in many cases the disclosure was copious. There were warnings of the risks; investors just failed to heed the warning signs that should have led them to further investigation. In other words, the disclosure failed to work.
In a new paper, “Limits of Disclosure,” Claire Hill and I examine the types of disclosure that were made before the financial crisis. Specifically, we examine disclosure made in connection with the sale of synthetic collateralized debt obligations, or C.D.O.’s, where the reference securities were mortgage-backed securities. These were synthetic bets on the value of mortgage securities with one party taking the long side and the other the short.
In the wake of this colossal failure, allegations have been made that the banks promoting these financial instruments did not disclose that they also had short positions in them. Alternatively, in the Abacus case, the allegation was that Goldman allowed John Paulson’s hedge fund to hand-select the securities to bet against, thereby creating an investment that was “doomed to fail.”
But a review of the offering documents for these deals shows that there were ample warning signs, had buyers looked deeper. Take the Abacus C.D.O., for example. The pitch book for the deal stated specifically that Goldman Sachs “shall not have a fiduciary relationship with any investor.” That is, Goldman was not bound to see if the investment was suitable for an investor or to act in investors’ best interest.
Not only that, these materials warned investors that they should do their own investigation. Again, the Abacus pitch book stated that “Goldman Sachs may, by virtue of its status as an underwriter, advisor or otherwise, possess or have access to non-publicly available information.” It continued, “Accordingly, this presentation may not contain all information that would be material to the evaluation of the merits and risks of purchasing the Notes.” In other words, Goldman told its customers to do their own investigation and not rely on the firm.
As for allegations that Goldman’s trading arm was simultaneously taking a short position in the housing market, there is disclosure on that too. The Abacus offering memorandum stated that “Goldman Sachs is currently and may be from time to time in the future an active participant on both sides of the market and have long or short positions” adding that the firm may have “potential conflicts of interest.”
Despite the warnings, the evidence is that the buyers of these synthetic collateralized debt obligations did not do a thorough investigation into the securities themselves, let alone follow up on the above disclosure.
The recent S.E.C. case against the Citigroup employee Brian Stoker shows this. The S.E.C. contends that Citigroup had sold another such investment, the Class V Funding III C.D.O., while simultaneously planning to short the security, a fact it did not disclose to buyers. Citigroup settled the action, but Mr. Stoker disputed the allegations.
The largest buyer of Class V Funding III was Ambac, the mortgage-backed security insurer, which was a very sophisticated investor. When David Salz, the Ambac manager who made the decision to invest in this security, was asked at trial whether he had done an investigation of the securities underlying the C.D.O., he claimed that Ambac had not because it had relied on the work of the portfolio selection manager, Credit Suisse Alternative Asset Management.
Yet, the offering memorandum for Class V Funding III stated that the Credit Suisse unit was not acting as “advisors” or “agents” to the buyer, and that any buyer should make its investment decision determine “without reliance” on either. The memorandum further stated that not only could Citigroup and Credit Suisse have conflicts, but also that the firms’ “actions may be inconsistent with or adverse to the interests of the Noteholders.” And the offering memorandum had the same disclosure as the Abacus that place the onus on the investors to do their own homework.
All these various offering memos did not even acknowledge that the mortgage market was heading downward. This disclosure taken from Timberwolf C.D.O., a residential mortgage-backed security and another Goldman deal that has resulted in litigation, began to appear in 2007: “Recently the residential mortgage market in the U.S. has experienced a variety of difficulties and changed economic conditions that may adversely affect the performance and market value of R.M.B.S.” It continued: “In addition, in recent months, housing prices and appraisal values in many states have declined or stopped appreciating. A continued decline or expected flattening of those values may result in additional increases in delinquencies and losses on R.M.B.S. generally.”
Yet, not only did investors ignore this disclosure, they ignored it despite reading it. At the Class V Funding III trial, Mr. Salz of Ambac was asked at trial about the risk factor disclosure in the Class V Funding III offering memo. Asked if he read it, he replied: “Yes. It’s boilerplate language. . . . it was standard language.”
In other words, Ambac felt comfortable to ignore it because it the language was commonly appearing in documents. Furthermore, Ambac’s legal counsel even marked up the offering document and made comments on the offering memorandum.
Ambac lost $300 million on this deal. Mr. Stoker was acquitted by a jury of the civil charges against him.
What is so troubling about all of this is that the investors in these C.D.O.’s were the most sophisticated investors with considerable money — $100 million or more — under management. Class V Funding III’s buyers included not only Ambac but also the Koch brothers and a number of hedge funds.
These were not the “stupid” sophisticated investors that Michael Lewis depicted in his book “The Big Short.” These were investors who should have known that this disclosure should have prompted further inquiry. In particular, these investors knew that for them to take a long position on the C.D.O. there had to be someone on the short side.
So why did these investors make these investments if they did not do their due diligence or even pay real attention to the disclosure? From the testimony given at the Class V Funding III trial, it appears that these investors made macroeconomic bets on housing, following the herd, which thought housing would go up. In this regard, arguments that the securities were too complex to understand don’t bear out.
This is a problem. Sophisticated investors are supposed to read the documents. We all know that retail investors don’t often take the time to read disclosure, but the securities laws are based on the idea that information is filtered into the markets through disclosure to sophisticated investors who then set the real price of the security.
This is a form of the efficient market hypothesis. If sophisticated investors can’t be bothered to read the documents and act on them, then we have a real gap in the entire disclosure regime and asset pricing generally.
Unfortunately, this is what the evidence from the C.D.O. market before the financial crisis shows. And because of this, the idea that requiring still more, better or clearer disclosure is likely to be unfruitful in many cases.
I have no great solution to this. Until we better understand how sophisticated investors process and read disclosure, regulators should be wary of trying to solve the problem by simply requiring more disclosure.
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/11/02/...cus-and-other-soured-deals/
Ambac Financial Group, Inc. and Ambac Assurance Corporation, (the “Companies”), in response to the effects of Hurricane Sandy, have indefinitely closed their headquarters at One State Street Plaza, New York, New York. The Companies have relocated their headquarters to their disaster recovery site in Kingston, New York.
The Companies do not anticipate that the relocation will have any material adverse impact on their business operations.
About Ambac
On November 8, 2010, Ambac Financial Group, Inc. (“Ambac”) filed for a voluntary petition for relief under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code (“Bankruptcy Code”) in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York (“Bankruptcy Court”).
The Bankruptcy Court entered an order confirming Ambac’s plan of reorganization on March 14, 2012 however, Ambac is not currently able to estimate when it will be able to consummate such reorganization. Until the plan of reorganization is consummated and Ambac emerges from bankruptcy,
it will continue to operate in the ordinary course of business as “debtor-in-possession” in accordance with the applicable provisions of the Bankruptcy Code and the orders of the Bankruptcy Court. Currently, Ambac’s common stock trades in the over-the-counter market under ticker symbol ABKFQ. Upon consummation of the plan of reorganization, Ambac’s existing common stock will be cancelled and extinguished and the holders thereof will not be entitled to receive, and will not retain, any property or interest on account of such common stock.
Ambac’s principal operating subsidiary, Ambac Assurance Corporation, is a guarantor of public finance and structured finance obligations.
http://www.istockanalyst.com/business/news/...-disaster-recovery-site
Was am 08.10.2012 von einem Richter Namens:
"Honorable William D. Johnston at the Lafayette Coutry Courthouse, 626 Main Street, Darlington, Wisconsin".
aufgegriffen/genehmigt werden sollte......
GangsterPack das........ :-(
Hi,
"Upon consummation of the plan of reorganization, Ambac’s existing common stock will be cancelled and extinguished and the holders thereof will not be entitled to receive, and will not retain, any property or interest on account of such common stock."
Warum diese ausschließliche "Feststellung" im Zusammenhang mit der Änderung der Geschäftsräume im zitierten Text wieder einmal betont wird, kann man nur vermuten. Sollen damit die letzten Aktionäre veranlasst werden, sich von ihren Aktien zu welchem Preis auch immer schnell zu trennen? Da gefiel mir natürlich der Beitrag von cooleraktionär unter 6874 besser, bleibt doch damit die Hoffnung erhalten.
MfG
Halcyon’s long positions in General Motors Company (NYSE:GM) and Ambac Financial Group, Inc. (PINK:ABKFQ) and Ally Financial Inc are also up, and the fund expects to receive profits as Lehman Brothers distributes the second round of claims.
Halcyon’s holding in Kinder Morgan Inc (NYSE:KMI) is also profiting in the face of its acquisition by El Paso LLC (NYSE:EP). Kinder Morgan’s stock has still not realized its full value according to Halcyon.
http://www.valuewalk.com/2012/11/...-equity-hedge-funds-gain-profits/
Issues:
Rating Rating Date
¿375 mil 4.875% nts ser A7 due 03/29/2029 AA- 30-Nov-2011
(bnd ins: Assured Guaranty (Europe) Ltd.)
¿50 mil fltg rate nts ser A3 due 10/21/2015 AA- 30-Nov-2011
(bnd ins: Assured Guaranty (Europe) Ltd.)
¿50 mil fltg rate nts ser A4 due 10/21/2015 AA- 30-Nov-2011
(bnd ins: Assured Guaranty (Europe) Ltd.)
¿150 mil 2.066% index-linked nts ser A6 due
10/21/2025 BBB 06-Jun-2008
(bnd ins: Syncora Guarantee U.K. Ltd. )
¿250 mil 2.013% index-linked nts ser A8 due
10/21/2035 BBB 06-Jun-2008
(bnd ins: Syncora Guarantee U.K. Ltd.)
¿233 mil fltg rate nts ser A2 due 10/21/2015 BBB 24-Jun-2009
(bnd ins: Ambac Assurance U.K. Ltd.
¿215 mil 4.875% nts ser A5 due 12/21/2020 BBB 24-Jun-2009
(bnd ins: Ambac Assurance U.K. Ltd.)
¿5 bil med-term note Prog 12/10/2007: sr
unsecd BBB 12-Dec-2007
¿225 mil 6.375% med-term nts due 05/15/2040 BBB 08-May-2008
¿300 mil 5.125% med-term nts ser A10 due
11/02/2018 BBB 23-Oct-2009
¿300 mil 4.875% med-term nts ser 1 due
10/05/2023 BBB 30-Sep-2011
Rationale:
The ratings on U.K.-based gas distribution network (GDN) companies Scotland Gas Networks PLC and Southern Gas Networks PLC are based on the consolidated credit quality of the Scotia Gas Networks Ltd. group (Scotia; not rated). Standard & Poor's Ratings Services' view of Scotia's "excellent" business risk profile is underpinned by our opinion of the transparent and predictable regulatory framework under the U.K. regulator, the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (Ofgem). We believe, however, that regulatory reset risk is currently at its highest in the regulatory cycle, as the next regulatory period starting April 1, 2013 will be governed under a new framework called "Revenue = Incentives + Innovation + Outputs" (RIIO).
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/06/idUSWLA583620121106
Hi,
"Upon consummation of the plan of reorganization, Ambac’s existing common stock will be cancelled and extinguished and the holders thereof will not be entitled to receive, and will not retain, any property or interest on account of such common stock."
Warum diese ausschließliche "Feststellung" im Zusammenhang mit der Änderung der Geschäftsräume im zitierten Text wieder einmal betont wird, kann man nur vermuten. Sollen damit die letzten Aktionäre veranlasst werden, sich von ihren Aktien zu welchem Preis auch immer schnell zu trennen?
Es handelt sich um den -- wie man sieht, natürlich ungenügenden -- Versuch, eine Art "Anlegerschutz" zu betreiben, sodass sich durch diese Meldungen bzw. Interpretationen davon nur ja niemand veranlaßt sieht, die völlig wertlosen Aktien zu erwerben. So kann dann nachher auch niemand heulend zu den debtors rennen.
P.S.: Halcyon hat natürlich die Bonds, nicht die Aktien. Die haben auch tatsächlich ganz gut performt seit confirmation.
Capital One Financial Corp. /quotes/zigman/142838/quotes/nls/cof COF +0.70% was sued last month by bond insurer Ambac Assurance Corp. over alleged breaches pertaining to mortgage securities created by a predecessor of the bank.
The McLean, Va.-based bank said the lawsuit alleges that Capital One violated so-called representations and warranties in contracts for six securitizations that Ambac helped insure. The securitizations had an original principal balance of $5.2 billion, Capital One said Thursday in its quarterly report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The securities were sponsored and backed by loans originated by Chevy Chase Bank, which Capital One acquired in 2009.
The lawsuit was filed Oct. 24 by Ambac Assurance Corp. and the Segregated Account of Ambac Assurance Corp., which are part of Ambac Financial Group Inc. /quotes/zigman/1312239/quotes/nls/abkfq ABKFQ +11.11% , in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The plaintiffs are seeking unspecified damages and an order compelling Capital One to indemnify Ambac for all accrued and future damages based on the alleged breaches.
A spokeswoman for Capital One declined to comment.
Capital One is one of numerous banks facing litigation from bond insurers over mortgage securities the insurers allege contained loans that were improperly underwritten.
The bank has established a reserve to pay for costs stemming from representation and warranty issues. It estimated the future losses stemming from such issues could exceed its reserve by about $1.7 billion as of Sept. 30, Capital One said in the filing
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/...ew-ambac-mortgage-suit-2012-11-08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/...87b7e56c_story.html
evtl. haben die von allen Seiten so viel geklatscht bekommen, das se sich nicht mehr trauen irgendetwas bekannt zu geben.......
ggf. Die Gewinne so hoch, das man schon allein deshalb den PoR in schwarz in den Schornstein schreiben kann.........und dadurch könnte der Betrug, den se im Frühjahr gemacht haben, auffliegen......
also, in deren Haut möchte ich nicht stecken..........
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/12/idUSWLA620420121112
Alle Geldversteckmöglichkeiten ausgenutzt.
Jetzt muß man erst mal eine Lücke suchen um Geld zu verstecken.........
http://www.ambac.com/investor_quarterly.asp
weil......
"mir" und "mich" verwechsele ich nicht, das kommt bei MICH nicht vor.......... :-)
Das US Rechtssystem hat auf eindrucksvolle Weise bewiesen, welchen Interessen präferiert werden.
Was soll dann hier passieren?