Search results for

events@HSBC.com Phew! We’ve been flat out organising our monumental Chinese New Year Party. How appropriate that 2008 is the year of the Rat: lean, mean and happy to scrounge around in the sewer for sustenance.

The new year has yet to bring much cheer to the European ABS market. With many people still on holiday, activity in both primary and secondary markets was negligible; with only indicative credit default swap spreads giving any concrete indication of sentiment.

Moody's Investors Service last week placed on review for downgrade 13 classes of residential mortgage-backed notes originated by U.K. non-conforming lender, Kensington Mortgages and already downgraded two classes in the same series.

A bond issue by the Republic of the Congo sealed a restructuring deal with the London Club of commercial creditors this week, replacing around $2.1bn of bank loans that had been in default for up to two decades. Ninety percent of creditors accepted the deal, which wrote off more than 77% of the debt and arrears involved. Congo (also known as Congo-Brazzaville), is enjoying an oil export boom. The deal implies debt relief of more than $1.6bn, equivalent to 25% of its external debt, or 19% of GDP.

IMF praises London Club restructuring, but doubts raised on the government’s use of new funds

The UK’s Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) has joined the line of supplicants at the Bank of England’s door, asking for assistance in funding £90bn of net mortgage lending next year. However, the UK’s Financial Service Authority (FSA) sounded a warning on growth in the mortgage sector, warning that lenders may have to sacrifice growth for liquidity.

U.K. subprime mortgage lender Money Partners is considering cutting staff and says the slump in the securitization market is a prime reason.

Tuesday evening found Leak at the Norwegian ambassador’s residence in Kensington Palace Gardens for Kommunalbanken’s Christmas party. Squeezed into Bjarne Lindstrøm’s front room — no flat panel TVs here, Oslo’s top man in London had a fully fledged string quartet next to the sofa — Leak couldn’t help but be impressed at the turnout. We never suspected that so many syndicate managers, originators and MTN traders were needed for one global dollar benchmark and a few power reverse duals each year, though maybe the bankers assembled just as an excuse to head off to The Collection in South Kensington afterwards.

Kensington Mortgages has been forced to temporarily shelve its subprime product offering as mortgage-backed securities investors have continued to shun non-prime paper.

Debtoffice@Belgium.com How long does it take to get from London to Brussels, for heaven’s sake? Two hours by plane? Not if you’re Guy Reid it doesn’t. He must have cycled here as it took him eight hours, but Eddy Merckx he is not.

The UK subprime mortgage industry suffered its first casualty on Tuesday when Victoria Mortgage Funding, a small non-conforming lender, went into administration.

U.K. specialist mortgage lender Kensington is temporarily pulling out of the secured loan market because of pressures stemming from the U.S. subprime crisis.