The year since the American Securitization Forum’s last annual conference was a bumpy one for the industry, which managed to make significant forward steps despite a range of setbacks. The focus in many sectors moved out to broader global issues. The natural disaster in Japan, the uprising in the Middle East, the downgrade of U.S. debt by Standard & Poor’s and the increasing gloom over Europe’s economic stability dulled much of the year’s earlier optimism and turned the heat up on markets already bubbling with uncertainty. Capital markets volatility caused some shops, including Credit Suisse’s commercial mortgage-backed securities group and UBS’ consumer asset-backed securitization group, to close their doors. Market players became nostalgic for a time when they didn’t have to judge the tone of the day’s headlines in order to stay abreast of sharp market moves.
But the industry did make gains, with types of deals not seen since the market took a dive in 2008 beginning to trickle back. The first post-crash whole business securitization was unveiled early in the year. The collateralized loan obligation market began to see familiar faces return with new issuance. CMBS saw the return of publicly registered bond classes, inviting a broader base of investors and encouraging new bursts of spread tightening in the sector. Here’s a look at some of the other big events of the last 12 months.
>> Click here to view The Year In Review Timeline in pdf format.