Wells Fargo pulls popular subprime loan from mix

(Reuters) - The company in an e-mail said it ended on Friday retail offerings of so-called 2/28 loans, which at 65 percent of all subprime mortgages last year are the staple of the industry. Payments on 2/28 adjustable-rate mortgages are based on rates that are fixed for two years and then are adjusted twice a year for the remaining 28, if the loan is not refinanced.




Decisions were partly driven by the $583 billion market for subprime mortgage bonds, where sales rely on opinions of rating companies such as Moody's Investors Service, Wells Fargo said. Rating companies in the past two weeks have unleashed a flood of downgrades on subprime bonds in response to rising delinquencies and increased their assumptions of losses that new loans will produce.


Read more at Reuters.com Bonds News

Criminal probes often weigh on debt ratings - study

(Reuters) - The report by Moody's Investors Service looked at
the credit rating agency's actions regarding companies that
reached pretrial agreements with federal prosecutors
investigating allegations of wrongdoing.




These pacts, generally called deferred prosecution or
non-prosecution agreements, have become increasingly common as
companies in the government's crosshairs seek to avoid the fate
of accounting firm Arthur Andersen, which went out of business
following its indictment in 2002.


Read more at Reuters.com Bonds News

UPDATE 2-Moody's raises loss expectations on subprime loans

(Reuters) - Nicolas Weill, team managing director and chief credit
officer at Moody's, said the agency is increasing its loss
expectations for newly originated loans by 10 percent, and for
other loans to as high as 25 percent.




Moody's on Tuesday cut ratings of 399 mortgage-backed
securities and may cut ratings of another 32, affecting a total
of $5.2 billion in debt. For details, see [ID:nN10336254]


Read more at Reuters.com Bonds News

TREASURIES-Bonds fall as stocks up on muted subprime view

(Reuters) - NEW YORK, July 11 - U.S. government bond prices
dropped on Wednesday as investors bought stocks on the belief
that there may have been an overreaction to worries about the
extent of the subprime mortgage market's troubles.




However, bond investors were alert for any repeat of
Tuesday's stock market sell-off that triggered flows into the
safety of Treasuries and lifted the 10-year note to its
strongest daily performance since Feb. 27. On Tuesday, the Dow
Jones industrial average fell 148 points after Standard
& Poor's and Moody's began to cut credit ratings on about $17
billion of mortgage-related debt. The Standard & Poor's 500
index ended Tuesday's session down 1.42 percent and the
Nasdaq composite index fell 1.16 percent.


Read more at Reuters.com Bonds News

CORRECTED - Moody's weighs ratings as drug-patent lapses near

(Reuters) - NEW YORK, July 10 - Moody's Investors Service on
Tuesday said a wave of patent expirations on blockbuster drugs
between 2010 and 2012 could lead it to begin lowering its
credit ratings on a number of large U.S. drugmakers several
years before then.




Eli Lilly and Co. , Pfizer Inc. and
Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. are particularly vulnerable to
the downgrades because the top-selling drug of each expires in
that period.


Read more at Reuters.com Bonds News

Subprime worries quickly reshaping rate ideas

(Reuters) - Short-term interest rate futures, which measure market expectations of likely Fed policy, jumped on Tuesday after Standard & Poors said it might cut $12 billion in debt tied to subprime mortgages.




Rival Moody's Investor Services later said it had cut ratings of 399 mortgage-backed securities and was eyeing downgrades on another 32.


Read more at Reuters.com Bonds News

Moody's downgrades Consolidated Natural Gas rating

(Reuters) - "The majority of the debt that was issued by Consolidated
Natural Gas is expected to be retired this month," Moody's
said. Dominion Resources is selling most of its exploration and
production assets for about $13.9 billion of pretax proceeds,
part of which will be used for de-leveraging, Moody's said.




Dominion said in May that it was merging its Consolidated
Natural Gas unit into the parent holding company in an effort
to cut costs and streamline its corporate structure.


Read more at Reuters.com Bonds News

3M plans 7-year euro benchmark bond -lead

(Reuters) - 3M is rated Aa1 by Moody's Investors Service and AA by
Standard & Poor's.




Read more at Reuters.com Bonds News

European automakers face rating challenge: Moody's

(Reuters) - "Moody's believes global demand for passenger cars and light vehicles should grow by 2-3 percent per annum in the long term," Falk Frey, a Moody's senior vice president, said in a report. "However, the challenges for European manufacturers to participate in this trend are immense."




The credit ratings agency said the main driver of the credit quality of European automakers in the short-to-medium term will be their dependency on Western European markets where demand is set to remain flat, leading to a continued battle for market share. French and Italian producers in particular are highly exposed to Western Europe, it said.


Read more at Reuters.com Bonds News