In this blog, Katten examines the impacts of the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 23, 2021 ruling in Collins v. Yellen that the structure of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) violates the separation of powers architecture of the Constitution.

After almost four decades of use, the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) is coming to a long-planned and much anticipated end. With approximately $400 trillion in financial contracts linked to LIBOR globally, and the United States accounting for over half of that amount, the mid-2023 final cessation date for the most widely used USD tenors presents significant risks across the financial markets, impacting consumer and business borrowers, lenders, investors, banks, and other market participants. Market participants and regulators have worked hard to get to this point, with much progress made.

On January 14, 2021, The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) and the U.S. Department of the Treasury announced amendments to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s Preferred Stock Purchase Agreements (PSPAs). In this latest blog, SFA examines the new regulatory caps and its impact on access to credit for homeowners.

As co-chairs of the ARRC SWG, SFA has an instrumental role in helping to enable a smooth transition and, most recently, identifying the key considerations relevant to developing new issuance of securitized products based on SOFR.

Effective advocacy is built with research, consensus-building, education, and communication – and often supported by more formal, written on-record communication.

As the Democratic majority in Congress seek to pass Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief plan to support the nation’s economic recovery, they plan to use a budget reconciliation to ensure its swift passage. Given we often hear how many former and current Hill staffers say they could use a refresher on what this legislative process entails, we thought it would be good opportunity to review for them as well as our other market participants that haven’t come across its use previously.

As the Biden administration settles in and nominees are confirmed by the Senate, the first 100 days are expected to focus on additional COVID-19 relief, a coordinated vaccine roll out, and Executive Orders that seek to overturn Trump era policies and regulations.

Sustainable Investing is an investment discipline that integrates environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations to the investment process and straddles across equity and fixed income markets. The unprecedented volatility that has come to define 2020 is expected to boost flows into an already thriving ESG market. SFA is committed to guiding the securitization industry towards a goal of building a robust ESG market in structured finance.

New GAO report finds highest-rated senior tranches of collateralized loan obligations (CLOs) remained “largely resilient” following the initial COVID-19 shock even as the leveraged loans deteriorated.

SFA’s Director of MBS Policy Dallin Merrill recaps the Supreme Court’s oral arguments for Collins v. Mnuchin, which included a series of consolidated cases covering both the GSE’s net worth sweep to Treasury under the PSPAs, as well as the Constitutionality of the FHFA’s structure.