INSURANCE giant Legal & General is poised to announce the appointment of Scots-born banker John Stewart as its new chairman.

NATIONWIDE Building Society has suffered a sharp fall in first-half profits as it felt the squeeze from low interest rates and the "dramatic fall" in commercial proper

LLOYDS Banking Group and private equity firm Alchemy have sold their social housing construction firm Environmental Property Services to facilities management group Mitie.

SANTANDER, owner of Abbey and Alliance & Leicester, has unveiled plans to shake up the current account market with a fee-free package for mortgage customers.

BUSINESS lending continues to look sickly. The patient may be keeping down a little dry toast and warm milk, but it sure isn't going for a jog around the block.

Posted To: Transparency is the new buzz word in the financial world, especially in the mortgage industry. W hile government officials and financial pundits pay "TRANSPARENCY" plenty of lip service, those of us working on the front lines of origination

Posted To: Despite the 4 tick improvement on the day that leaves MBS just about as close to all time highs as we could ask for, the lack of excitement this week is a bit of a let down. Sure,

Posted To: Its 430 on a Friday afternoon. The market is resting after a week's worth of grinding to the right. (Note sarcasm.) It was exciting when the week began...but it sure did fizzle out into the close. Everything we

Posted To: With absolutely no exaggeration, all but one, maybe two of the times I've looked at my screens before writing this week MBS have been between -2 and +2 ticks on the day while changes in tsy's have been

Posted To: Much of our analysis this week has focused on the technical dynamics of range limits and the interconnected relationship between the market's perception of fundamentals and trader's ongoing short term profit churning positional tactics. While some of the

Posted To: While benchmark interest rates continue to chop around in a contained range, mortgage-backed securities have moved sideways, failing to make much progress in either direction. Although we have experience a few moments of added volatility, tight trading ranges

Posted To: One top ex-secondary guy wrote to me and said, "Things I sort of miss hearing in mortgage banking: "What are rates gonna do tomorrow?" "Why is IndyMac a point better than we are?" Anything associated with "Did you

Posted To: Got this email update from eFannieMae last night.... Fannie Mae lanza nuevo HomePath.com en español, con el propósito de ayudar a más hispanos a adquirir su vivienda. Herramientas interactivas e información diseñada para guiar a los potenciales propietarios

Posted To: In line with weak global markets, US equities are looking to open lower this morning. Two hours before the bell sounds S&P 500 futures are down 8.2 points at 1,086 and the Dow is off 68 points to

Posted To: Earlier in the day we discussed movement in MBS prices that brought 4.5's to their lowest levels of the session, but we mentioned some support for MBS as well as some support for tsy yields that had been

Posted To: The Federal Reserve today reported on their weekly purchases of agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS). In the five trading days between November 12 and November 18, the Federal Reserve purchased a total of $17.23 billion agency MBS. In those

Posted To: Mortgage loan delinquencies continued to rise in the third quarter according to information released on Thursday by the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA). Loans on one-to-four unit family homes that were delinquent, but not yet in foreclosure, reached 9.64

Posted To: Heading into the close, the FN 4.0 is trading +0-02 at 99-09 yielding 4.078% and the FN 4.5 is +0-02 at 101-24 yielding 4.286%. The secondary market current coupon (CC) is 4.13%. The CC is +78/10yr TSY and

Posted To: This is one of those obligatory alerts where price action in context doesn't justify an alert, but MBS prices have touched their lows of the day. In addition tsy's have broken out of their trend of improvement on

Posted To: On the same day that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was in downtown Washington calling on banks to boost lending , up on Capitol Hill the House Financial Services Committee passed an amendment to that would do just the