Bond Fund Fraud Attorneys

Miles Costello of The Times Online reports that the cloud of uncertainty hanging over the credit markets was thrown into sharp relief yesterday as UBS told investors that it still could not be sure about the full financial impact of the credit crunch.

UBS is preparing for writedowns of $13.4 billion (£6.8 billion) against its exposure to the downturn in American sub-prime mortgages.

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Travis Pantin of the New York Sun reports that the number of class action lawsuits filed against Wall Street firms surged in the last year, fueled by the meltdown in the subprime mortgage market, according to new research published yesterday.

There was a 43% jump in the number of securities fraud class action lawsuits last year to 166 suits — 100 of which were filed after the mortgage crisis hit, the study by Stanford Law School and Cornerstone Research.

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Andrew Leckly of Tribune Media Services reports that stock of MBIA Inc. declined sharply in 2007. Although the giant bond guarantor has international growth prospects, don’t count on them if it drops the ball in its own country.

Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch rating services have affirmed their AAA financial strength rating of MBIA, but also added an ominous “negative outlook.” They’d previously assumed MBIA had been conservative in all business dealings.

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Alistair Barr of Marketwatch reports that State Street Corp’s decision to set aside $618 million to cover subprime litigation costs has increased concern that insurers offering policies covering such expenses could be hit with big claims from the credit crisis.

Paul Davies of FT.com reports that almost $6.5bn worth of complex debt securities face fresh downgrades by Standard & Poor’s because of their exposure to US mortgage-backed bonds, the credit rating agency said Friday.The news will add to the pain for investors in such instruments and follows downgrades issued to $3.7bn worth of similar instruments on Thursday from S&P. In all, the agency has either downgraded or placed on review more than $77bn worth of collateralised debt obligations (CDOs) that have direct exposure to the crisis in the US mortgage markets.

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NASD Notice To Members 04-30 notes that it is the responsibility of firms to take appropriate steps to ensure that their associated persons understand and inform their customers about the risks as well as the rewards of the products they recommend and offer.

To read the full NTM click here.

NASD Notice to Members (NTM) 04-30 provides that as the number of retail customers investing in bonds and bond funds grows, NASD is concerned that many investors may not fully appreciate the risks and costs associated with such products. It is the responsibility of firms to take appropriate steps to ensure that their registered representatives understand and inform their customers about the risks as well as the rewards of the products they offer and recommend. The purpose of this Notice is to remind firms that sell bonds and bond funds of their sales practice obligations in connection with such products.

To read the full notice click here.

CNNMoney.com reports that even the American Dialect Society knows how risky home mortgages are these days.The group of wordsmiths chose “subprime” as 2007’s Word of the Year at its annual convention Friday.

“‘Subprime’ has been around with bankers for awhile, but now everyone is talking about ’subprime,”‘ said Wayne Glowka, a spokesman for the group and a dean at Reinhardt College in Waleska, Ga. “It’s affecting all kinds of people in all kinds of places.”

About 80 members of the organization spent two days debating the merits of runners-up “Facebook,” “green,” “Googleganger” and “waterboarding” before voting for an adjective that means “a risky or less than ideal loan, mortgage or investment.”

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Michael Hudson and Aparajita Saha-Bubna of the WSJ report that turmoil in the subprime-mortgage market fanned out yesterday, hitting a group of investments that are exposed to this struggling class of home loans.

Moody’s Investors Service said yesterday it may cut its credit ratings on slices of 91 collateralized-debt obligations, or about $5 billion of securities. It is a small percentage of the overall CDO market, but still an important development, because it is a signal that subprime fallout is rippling through financial markets to an important class of investments.

In another sign of these ripple effects, Fitch Ratings released a report yesterday raising cautionary flags about the commercial real-estate market. It projected rising defaults in this sector after years of increasingly lax lending standards, which could hit bonds backed by commercial real-estate loans.

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Michael Hudson of the WSJ reports that twelve years ago, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. sent a vice president to California to check out First Alliance Mortgage Co. Lehman was thinking about tapping into First Alliance’s lucrative business of making “subprime” home loans to consumers with sketchy credit.

The vice president, Eric Hibbert, wrote a memo describing First Alliance as a financial “sweat shop” specializing in “high pressure sales for people who are in a weak state.” At First Alliance, he said, employees leave their “ethics at the door.”

The big Wall Street investment bank decided First Alliance wasn’t breaking any laws. Lehman went on to lend the mortgage company roughly $500 million and helped sell more than $700 million in bonds backed by First Alliance customers’ loans. But First Alliance later collapsed. Lehman landed in court, where a federal jury found the firm helped First Alliance defraud customers.

Today, Lehman is a prime example of how Wall Street’s money and expertise have helped transform subprime lending into a major force in the U.S. financial markets. Lehman says it is proud of its role in helping provide credit to consumers who might otherwise have been unable to buy a home, and proud of the controls it has brought to a sometimes-unruly business.

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