Collateralized Debt Obligation - Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia

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12/1/2015 Collateralized debt obligation Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateralized_debt_obligation 1/23 Collateralized debt obligation From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia A collateralized debt obligation (CDO) is a type of structured assetbacked security (ABS). [1] Originally developed for the corporate debt markets, over time CDOs evolved to encompass the mortgage and mortgagebacked security ("MBS") markets. [2] Like other private label securities backed by assets, a CDO can be thought of as a promise to pay investors in a prescribed sequence, based on the cash flow the CDO collects from the pool of bonds or other assets it owns. The CDO is "sliced" into "tranches", which "catch" the cash flow of interest and principal payments in sequence based on seniority. [3] If some loans default and the cash collected by the CDO is insufficient to pay all of its investors, those in the lowest, most "junior" tranches suffer losses first. The last to lose payment from default are the safest, most senior tranches. Consequently, coupon payments (and interest rates) vary by tranche with the safest/most senior tranches paying the lowest rates and the lowest tranches paying the highest rates to compensate for higher default risk. As an example, a CDO might issue the following tranches in order of safeness: Senior AAA (sometimes known as "super senior"); Junior AAA; AA; A; BBB; Residual. [4] Separate special purpose entities—rather than the parent investment bank—issue the CDOs and pay interest to investors. As CDOs developed, some sponsors repackaged tranches into yet another iteration, known as "CDOsquared" or "CDOs of CDOs." [4] In the early 2000s, CDOs were generally diversified, [5] but by 2006–2007—when the CDO market grew to hundreds of billions of dollars—this changed. CDO collateral became dominated not by loans, but by lower level (BBB or A) tranches recycled from other assetbacked securities, whose assets were usually nonprime mortgages. [6] These CDOs have been called "the engine that powered the mortgage supply chain" for nonprime mortgages, [7] and are credited with giving lenders greater incentive to make nonprime loans [8] leading up to the 20079 subprime mortgage crisis. Contents 1 Market history 1.1 Beginnings 1.1.1 Explanations for growth 1.2 Subprime mortgage boom

description

CDO which leads to crisis-08

Transcript of Collateralized Debt Obligation - Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia

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Collateralized debt obligationFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A collateralized debt obligation (CDO) is a type of structured asset­backed security (ABS).[1] Originally developed for the corporate debt markets,over time CDOs evolved to encompass the mortgage and mortgage­backed security ("MBS") markets.[2]

Like other private label securities backed by assets, a CDO can be thought of as a promise to pay investors in a prescribed sequence, based on the cashflow the CDO collects from the pool of bonds or other assets it owns. The CDO is "sliced" into "tranches", which "catch" the cash flow of interest andprincipal payments in sequence based on seniority.[3] If some loans default and the cash collected by the CDO is insufficient to pay all of its investors,those in the lowest, most "junior" tranches suffer losses first. The last to lose payment from default are the safest, most senior tranches. Consequently,coupon payments (and interest rates) vary by tranche with the safest/most senior tranches paying the lowest rates and the lowest tranches paying thehighest rates to compensate for higher default risk. As an example, a CDO might issue the following tranches in order of safeness: Senior AAA(sometimes known as "super senior"); Junior AAA; AA; A; BBB; Residual.[4]

Separate special purpose entities—rather than the parent investment bank—issue the CDOs and pay interest to investors. As CDOs developed, somesponsors repackaged tranches into yet another iteration, known as "CDO­squared" or "CDOs of CDOs."[4]

In the early 2000s, CDOs were generally diversified,[5] but by 2006–2007—when the CDO market grew to hundreds of billions of dollars—thischanged. CDO collateral became dominated not by loans, but by lower level (BBB or A) tranches recycled from other asset­backed securities, whoseassets were usually non­prime mortgages.[6] These CDOs have been called "the engine that powered the mortgage supply chain" for nonprimemortgages,[7] and are credited with giving lenders greater incentive to make non­prime loans[8] leading up to the 2007­9 subprime mortgage crisis.

Contents

1 Market history

1.1 Beginnings

1.1.1 Explanations for growth

1.2 Subprime mortgage boom

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1.2 Subprime mortgage boom

1.2.1 Explanations for growth

1.3 Crash

1.4 Criticism

2 Concept, structures, varieties

2.1 Concept

2.2 Structures

2.3 Taxation

2.4 Types

2.5 Types of collateral

2.6 Transaction participants

2.6.1 Investors

2.6.2 Underwriter

2.6.3 The asset manager

2.6.4 The trustee and collateral administrator

2.6.5 Accountants

2.6.6 Attorneys

3 See also

4 References

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5 External links

Market history

Beginnings

The first CDO was issued in 1987 by bankers at now­defunct Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc. for the also now­defunct Imperial Savings Association.[9]

During the 1990s the collateral of CDOs was generally corporate and emerging market bonds and bank loans.[10] After 1998 "multi­sector" CDOs weredeveloped by Prudential Securities,[11] but CDOs remained fairly obscure until after 2000.[12] In 2002 and 2003 CDOs had a setback when ratingagencies "were forced to downgrade hundreds" of the securities,[13] but sales of CDOs grew—from $69 billion in 2000 to around $500 billion in2006.[14] From 2004 through 2007, $1.4 trillion worth of CDOs were issued.[15]

Early CDOs were diversified, and might include everything from aircraft lease­equipment debt, manufactured housing loans, to student loans and creditcard debt. The diversification of borrowers in these "multisector CDOs" was a selling point, as it meant that if there was a downturn in one industry likeaircraft manufacturing and their loans defaulted, other industries like manufactured housing might be unaffected.[16] Another selling point was thatCDOs offered returns that were sometimes 2­3 percentage points higher than corporate bonds with the same credit rating.[16][17]

Explanations for growth

Advantages of securitization ­­ Depository banks had incentive to "securitize" loans they originated—often in the form of CDO securities—because this removes the loans from their books. The transfer of these loans (along with related risk) to security­buying investors banks in returnfor cash replenishes the banks' capital. This enabled them to remain in compliance with capital requirement laws while lending again andgenerating additional origination fees.Global demand for fixed income investments ­­ From 2000 to 2007 worldwide fixed income investment (i.e. investments in bonds and otherconservative securities) roughly doubled in size to $70 trillion, yet the supply of relatively safe, income generating investments had not grown asfast, which bid up bond prices and drove down interest rates.[18][19] Investment banks on Wall Street answered this demand with financialinnovation such as the mortgage­backed security (MBS) and collateralized debt obligation (CDO), which were assigned safe ratings by the creditrating agencies.[19]Low interest rates ­­ Fears of deflation, the bursting of the dot­com bubble, a U.S. recession, and the U.S. trade deficit kept interest rates lowglobally from 2000 to 2004­5, according to Economist Mark Zandi.[20] The low yield of the safe US Treasury bonds created demand by globalinvestors for subprime mortgage­backed CDOs with their relatively high­yields but credit ratings as high as the Treasuries. This search for yield

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by global investors caused many to purchase CDOs, though they lived to regret trusting the credit rating agencies' ratings.[21]

Pricing models ­­ Gaussian copula models, introduced in 2001 by David X. Li, allowed for the rapid pricing of CDOs.[22][23]

Subprime mortgage boom

Around 2005, as the CDO market continued to grow, subprime mortgages began to replace the diversified consumer loans as collateral. By 2004,mortgage­backed securities accounted for more than half of the collateral in CDOs.[7][25][26][27][28][29] According to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Report,"the CDO became the engine that powered the mortgage supply chain",[7] promoting an increase in demand for mortgage­backed securities withoutwhich lenders would have "had less reason to push so hard to make" non­prime loans.[8] CDOs not only bought crucial tranches of subprime mortgage­backed securities, they provided cash for the initial funding of the securities.[7] Between 2003 and 2007, Wall Street issued almost $700 billion in CDOsthat included mortgage­backed securities as collateral.[7] Despite this loss of diversification, CDO tranches were given the same proportion of highratings by rating agencies[30] on the grounds that mortgages were diversified by region and so "uncorrelated"[31]—though those ratings were loweredafter mortgage holders began to default.[32][33]

The rise of "ratings arbitrage"—i.e. pooling low­rated tranches to make CDOs—helped push sales of CDOs to about $500 billion in 2006,[14] with aglobal CDO market of over USD $1.5 trillion.[34] CDO was the fastest­growing sector of the structured finance market between 2003 and 2006; thenumber of CDO tranches issued in 2006 (9,278) was almost twice the number of tranches issued in 2005 (4,706).[35]

CDOs, like mortgage­backed securities, were financed with debt, enhancing their profits but also enhancing losses if the market reversed course.[36]

Explanations for growth

Subprime mortgages had been financed by mortgage­backed securities (MBS). Like CDOs, MBSs were structured into tranches, but issuers of thesecurities had difficulty selling the more lower level/lower­rated "mezzanine" tranches—the tranches rated somewhere from AA to BB.

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Source: Final Report of the National Commission on the Causes of theFinancial and Economic Crisis in the United States(http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/GPO­FCIC/pdf/GPO­FCIC.pdf), p.128, figure8.1

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IMF Diagram of CDO and RMBS

Securitization markets were impaired during the crisis.

The volume of CDOs issued globally crashed during thesubprime crisis but has recovered slightly. (source: SIFMA,Statistics, Structured Finance[24]

[B]ecause most traditional mortgage investors are risk­averse, either because ofthe restrictions of their investment charters or business practices, they areinterested in buying the higher­rated segments of the loan stack; as a result,those slices are easiest to sell. The more challenging task is finding buyers forthe riskier pieces of at the bottom of the pile. The way mortgage securities arestructured, if you cannot find buyers for the lower­rated slices, the rest of thepool cannot be sold.[37][38]

To deal with the problem investment bankers "recycled" the mezzanine tranches, sellingthem to underwriters making more structured securities—CDOs. Though the pool that madeup the CDO collateral might be overwhelmingly mezzanine tranches, most of the tranches(70[39] to 80%[40][41]) of the CDO were rated not BBB, A­, etc., but triple A. The minority ofthe tranches that were mezzanine were often bought up by other CDOs, concentrating thelower rated tranches still further. (see chart on "The Theory of How the Financial SystemCreated AA­rated Assets out of Subprime Mortgages")

As one journalist (Gretchen Morgenson) put it, CDOs became "the perfect dumping groundfor the low­rated slices Wall Street couldn't sell on its own."[37]

Other factors explaining the popularity of CDOs include:

Growing demand for fixed income investments that started earlier in the decadecontinued.[18][19] A "global savings glut"[42] leading to "large capital inflows" fromabroad helped finance the housing boom, keeping down US mortgage rates, even afterthe Federal Reserve Bank had raised interest rates to cool off the economy.[43]Supply generated by "hefty" fees the CDO industry earned. According to "one hedgefund manager who became a big investor in CDOs", as much "as 40 to 50 percent" ofthe cash flow generated by the assets in a CDO went to "pay the bankers, the CDOmanager, the rating agencies, and others who took out fees." [13] Rating agencies inparticular—whose high ratings of the CDO tranches were crucial to the industry andwho were paid by CDO issuers—earned extraordinary profits. Moody's Investors

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Service, one of the two biggest rating agencies, could earn "as much as $250,000 to rate a mortgage pool with $350 million in assets, versus the$50,000 in fees generated when rating a municipal bond of a similar size." In 2006, revenues from Moody's structured finance division "accountedfor fully 44%" of all Moody's sales.[44][45] Moody's operating margins were "consistently over 50%, making it one of the most profitablecompanies in existence"—more profitable in terms of margins than Exxon Mobil or Microsoft.[46] Between the time Moody's was spun off as apublic company and February 2007, its stock rose 340%.[46][47]Trust in rating agencies. CDO managers "didn't always have to disclose what the securities contained" because the contents of the CDO weresubject to change. But this lack of transparency did not affect demand for the securities. Investors "weren't so much buying a security. They werebuying a triple­A rating," according to business journalists Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera.[13]Financial innovations, such as credit default swaps and synthetic CDO. Credit default swaps provided insurance to investors against the possibilityof losses in the value of tranches from default in exchange for premium­like payments, making CDOs appear "to be virtually risk­free" toinvestors.[48] Synthetic CDOs were cheaper and easier to create than original "cash" CDOs. Synthetics "referenced" cash CDOs, replacing interestpayments from MBS tranches with premium­like payments from credit default swaps. Rather than providing funding for housing, synthetic CDO­buying investors were in effect providing insurance against mortgage default.[49] If the CDO did not perform per contractual requirements, onecounterparty (typically a large investment bank or hedge fund) had to pay another.[50] As underwriting standards deteriorated and the housingmarket became saturated, subprime mortgages became less abundant. Synthetic CDOs began to fill in for the original cash CDOs. Because morethan one—in fact numerous—synthetics could be made to reference the same original, the amount of money that moved among marketparticipants increased dramatically.

Crash

In the summer of 2006, the Case­Shiller index of house prices peaked.[52] In California home prices had more than doubled since 2000[53] and medianhouse prices in Los Angeles had risen to ten times the median annual income. To entice the low and moderate income to sign up for mortgages, downpayments, income documentation were often dispensed with and interest and principal payments were often deferred upon request.[54] Journalist MichaelLewis gave as an example of unsustainable underwriting practices a loan in Bakersfield, California, where "a Mexican strawberry picker with an incomeof $14,000 and no English was lent every penny he needed to buy a house of $724,000".[54]

As two­year "teaser" mortgage rates common with that made home purchases like this expired, and mortgage payments skyrocketed. Refinancing tolower mortgage payment was no longer available since it depended on rising home prices.[55] Mezzanine tranches started to lose value in 2007, by midyear AA tranches were worth only 70 cents on the dollar. By October triple­A tranches had started to fall.[56] Regional diversification notwithstanding,the mortgage backed securities turned out to be highly correlated.[10]

Big CDO arrangers like Citigroup, Merrill Lynch and UBS experienced some of the biggest losses, as did financial guaranteers such as AIG, Ambac,MBIA.[10]

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An early indicator of the crisis came in July 2007 when rating agencies made unprecedented mass downgrades of mortgage­related securities[57] (by theend of 2008 91% of CDO securities were downgraded[58]), and two highly leveraged Bear Stearns hedge funds holding MBSs and CDOs collapsed.Investors were informed by Bear Stearns that they would get little if any of their money back.[59][60]

In October and November the CEOs of Merrill Lynch and Citigroup resigned after reporting multi­billion dollar losses and CDO downgrades.[61][62][63]

As the global market for CDOs dried up[64][65] the new issue pipeline for CDOs slowed significantly,[66] and what CDO issuance there was usually in theform of collateralized loan obligations backed by middle­market or leveraged bank loans, rather than home mortgage ABS.[67] The CDO collapse hurtmortgage credit available to homeowners since the bigger MBS market depended on CDO purchases of mezzanine tranches.[68][69]

While non­prime mortgage defaults affected all securities backed by mortgages, CDOs were especially hard hit. More than half ­­ $300 billion worth—of tranches issued in 2005, 2006, and 2007 rated most safe—triple A ­­ by rating agencies, were either downgraded to junk status or lost principal by2009.[51] In comparison, only small fractions of triple A tranches of Alt­A or subprime mortgage­backed securities suffered the same fate. (see ImpairedSecurities chart)

Collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) also made up over half ($542 billion)of the nearly trillion dollars in losses suffered by financial institutions from2007 to early 2009.[32]

Criticism

Prior to the crisis, a few academics, analysts and investors such as WarrenBuffett (who famously disparaged CDOs and other derivatives as "financialweapons of mass destruction, carrying dangers that, while now latent, arepotentially lethal"[70]), and the IMF's former chief economist RaghuramRajan[71] warned that rather than reducing risk through diversification, CDOsand other derivatives spread risk and uncertainty about the value of theunderlying assets more widely.

During and after the crisis, criticism of the CDO market was more vocal.According to the radio documentary "Giant Pool of Money", it was the strongdemand for MBS and CDO, that drove down home lending standards.

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More than half of the highest­rated (Aaa) CDOs were "impaired" (losingprincipal or downgraded to junk status), compared to a small fraction ofsimilarly rated Subprime and Alt­A mortgage­backed securities. (source:Financial Crisis Inquiry Report [51])

Mortgages were needed for collateral and by approximately 2003, the supplyof mortgages originated at traditional lending standards had beenexhausted.[19]

The head of banking supervision and regulation at the Federal Reserve,Patrick Parkinson, termed "the whole concept of ABS CDOs", an"abomination".[10]

In December 2007, journalists Carrick Mollenkamp and Serena Ng wrote of a CDO called Norma created by Merrill Lynch at the behest of Illinoishedge fund, Magnetar. It was a tailor­made bet on subprime mortgages that went "too far." Janet Tavakoli, a Chicago consultant who specializes inCDOs said Norma "is a tangled hairball of risk." When it came to market in March 2007, "any savvy investor would have thrown this...in the trashbin."[72][73]

According to journalists Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera, no securities became "more pervasive ­­ or [did] more damage than collateralized debtobligations" to create the Great Recession.[12]

Gretchen Morgenson described the securities as "a sort of secret refuse heap for toxic mortgages [that] created even more demand for bad loans fromwanton lenders".

CDOs prolonged the mania, vastly amplifying the losses that investors would suffer and ballooning the amounts of taxpayer money thatwould be required to rescue companies like Citigroup and the American International Group." ...[74]

In the first quarter of 2008 alone, credit rating agencies announced 4,485 downgrades of CDOs.[67] At least some analysts complained the agencies over­relied on computer models with imprecise inputs, failed to account adequately for large risks (like a nationwide collapse of housing values), andassumed the risk of the low rated tranches that made up CDOs would be diluted when in fact the mortgage risks were highly correlated, and when onemortgage defaulted, many did, affected by the same financial events.[32][75]

They were strongly criticized by economist Joseph Stiglitz, among others. Stiglitz considered the agencies "one of the key culprits," of the crisis who"performed that alchemy that converted the securities from F­rated to A­rated. The banks could not have done what they did without the complicity ofthe ratings agencies."[76][77] According to Morgenson the agencies had pretended to transform "dross into gold." [44]

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"As usual, the ratings agencies were chronically behind on developments in the financial markets and they could barely keep up with thenew instruments springing from the brains of Wall Street's rocket scientists. Fitch, Moody's, and S&P paid their analysts far less than the bigbrokerage firms did and, not surprisingly wound up employing people who were often looking to befriend, accommodate, and impress theWall Street clients in hopes of getting hired by them for a multiple increase in pay. ... Their [the rating agencies] failure to recognize thatmortgage underwriting standards had decayed or to account for the possibility that real estate prices could decline completely underminedthe ratings agencies' models and undercut their ability to estimate losses that these securities might generate." [78]

Michael Lewis also pronounced the transformation of BBB tranches into 80% triple A CDOs as "dishonest", "artificial" and the result of "fat fees" paidto rating agencies by Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street firms.[79]

Synthetic CDOs were criticized in particular, because of the difficulties to judge (and price) the risk inherent in that kind of securities correctly. Thatadverse effect roots in the pooling and tranching activities on every level of the derivation.[3]

Others pointed out the risk of undoing the connection between borrowers and lenders—removing the lender's incentive to only pick borrowers who werecreditworthy—inherent in all securitization.[80][81][82] According to economist Mark Zandi: "As shaky mortgages were combined, diluting any problemsinto a larger pool, the incentive for responsibility was undermined."[21]

Zandi and others also criticized lack of regulation. "Finance companies weren't subject to the same regulatory oversight as banks. Taxpayers weren't onthe hook if they went belly up [pre­crisis], only their shareholders and other creditors were. Finance companies thus had little to discourage them fromgrowing as aggressively as possible, even if that meant lowering or winking at traditional lending standards."[21]

Concept, structures, varieties

Concept

CDOs vary in structure and underlying assets, but the basic principle is the same. A CDO is a type of asset­backed security. To create a CDO, acorporate entity is constructed to hold assets as collateral backing packages of cash flows which are sold to investors.[83] A sequence in constructing aCDO is:

A special purpose entity (SPE) is designed/constructed to acquire a portfolio of underlying assets. Common underlying assets held may includemortgage­backed securities, commercial real estate bonds and corporate loans.The SPE issues bonds to investors in exchange for cash, which are used to purchase the portfolio of underlying assets. Like other ABS private

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label securities, the bonds are not uniform but issued in layers called tranches, each with different risk characteristics. Senior tranches are paidfrom the cash flows from the underlying assets before the junior tranches and equity tranches. Losses are first borne by the equity tranches, nextby the junior tranches, and finally by the senior tranches.[84]

A common analogy compares the cash flow from the CDO's portfolio of securities (say mortgage payments from mortgage­backed bonds) to waterflowing into cups of the investors where senior tranches were filled first and overflowing cash flowed to junior tranches, then equity tranches. If a largeportion of the mortgages enter default, there is insufficient cash flow to fill all these cups and equity tranche investors face the losses first.

The risk and return for a CDO investor depends both on how the tranches are defined, and on the underlying assets. In particular, the investment dependson the assumptions and methods used to define the risk and return of the tranches.[85] CDOs, like all asset­backed securities, enable the originators of theunderlying assets to pass credit risk to another institution or to individual investors. Thus investors must understand how the risk for CDOs is calculated.

The issuer of the CDO, typically an investment bank, earns a commission at the time of issue and earns management fees during the life of the CDO.The ability to earn substantial fees from originating CDOs, coupled with the absence of any residual liability, skews the incentives of originators in favorof loan volume rather than loan quality.

In some cases, the assets held by one CDO consisted entirely of equity layer tranches issued by other CDOs. This explains why some CDOs becameentirely worthless, as the equity layer tranches were paid last in the sequence and there wasn't sufficient cash flow from the underlying subprimemortgages (many of which defaulted) to trickle down to the equity layers.

Structures

CDO is a broad term that can refer to several different types of products. They can be categorized in several ways. The primary classifications are asfollows:

Source of funds—cash flow vs. market value

Cash flow CDOs pay interest and principal to tranche holders using the cash flows produced by the CDO's assets. Cash flow CDOs focusprimarily on managing the credit quality of the underlying portfolio.Market value CDOs attempt to enhance investor returns through the more frequent trading and profitable sale of collateral assets. The CDO assetmanager seeks to realize capital gains on the assets in the CDO's portfolio. There is greater focus on the changes in market value of the CDO'sassets. Market value CDOs are longer­established, but less common than cash flow CDOs.

Motivation—arbitrage vs. balance sheet

Arbitrage transactions (cash flow and market value) attempt to capture for equity investors the spread between the relatively high yielding assets

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and the lower yielding liabilities represented by the rated bonds. The majority, 86%, of CDOs are arbitrage­motivated.[86]Balance sheet transactions, by contrast, are primarily motivated by the issuing institutions’ desire to remove loans and other assets from theirbalance sheets, to reduce their regulatory capital requirements and improve their return on risk capital. A bank may wish to offload the credit riskto reduce its balance sheet's credit risk.

Funding—cash vs. synthetic

Cash CDOs involve a portfolio of cash assets, such as loans, corporate bonds, asset­backed securities or mortgage­backed securities. Ownership ofthe assets is transferred to the legal entity (known as a special purpose vehicle) issuing the CDO's tranches. The risk of loss on the assets is dividedamong tranches in reverse order of seniority. Cash CDO issuance exceeded $400 billion in 2006.Synthetic CDOs do not own cash assets like bonds or loans. Instead, synthetic CDOs gain credit exposure to a portfolio of fixed income assetswithout owning those assets through the use of credit default swaps, a derivatives instrument. (Under such a swap, the credit protection seller, theCDO, receives periodic cash payments, called premiums, in exchange for agreeing to assume the risk of loss on a specific asset in the event thatasset experiences a default or other credit event.) Like a cash CDO, the risk of loss on the CDO's portfolio is divided into tranches. Losses willfirst affect the equity tranche, next the junior tranches, and finally the senior tranche. Each tranche receives a periodic payment (the swappremium), with the junior tranches offering higher premiums.

A synthetic CDO tranche may be either funded or unfunded. Under the swap agreements, the CDO could have to pay up to a certain amountof money in the event of a credit event on the reference obligations in the CDO's reference portfolio. Some of this credit exposure is fundedat the time of investment by the investors in funded tranches. Typically, the junior tranches that face the greatest risk of experiencing a losshave to fund at closing. Until a credit event occurs, the proceeds provided by the funded tranches are often invested in high­quality, liquidassets or placed in a GIC (Guaranteed Investment Contract) account that offers a return that is a few basis points below LIBOR. The returnfrom these investments plus the premium from the swap counterparty provide the cash flow stream to pay interest to the funded tranches.When a credit event occurs and a payout to the swap counterparty is required, the required payment is made from the GIC or reserveaccount that holds the liquid investments. In contrast, senior tranches are usually unfunded as the risk of loss is much lower. Unlike a cashCDO, investors in a senior tranche receive periodic payments but do not place any capital in the CDO when entering into the investment.Instead, the investors retain continuing funding exposure and may have to make a payment to the CDO in the event the portfolio's lossesreach the senior tranche. Funded synthetic issuance exceeded $80 billion in 2006. From an issuance perspective, synthetic CDOs take lesstime to create. Cash assets do not have to be purchased and managed, and the CDO's tranches can be precisely structured.

Hybrid CDOs have a portfolio including both cash assets—like a cash CDOs—and swaps that give the CDO credit exposure ot additional assets—like a synthetic CDO. A portion of the proceeds from the funded tranches is invested in cash assets and the remainder is held in reserve to coverpayments that may be required under the credit default swaps. The CDO receives payments from three sources: the return from the cash assets, theGIC or reserve account investments, and the CDO premiums.

Single­tranche CDOsThe flexibility of credit default swaps is used to construct Single Tranche CDOs (bespoke CDOs) where the entire CDO is structured specificallyfor a single or small group of investors, and the remaining tranches are never sold but held by the dealer based on valuations from internal models.Residual risk is delta­hedged by the dealer.

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Structured Operating CompaniesUnlike CDOs, which are terminating structures that typically wind­down or refinance at the end of their financing term, Structured OperatingCompanies are permanently capitalized variants of CDOs, with an active management team and infrastructure. They often issue term notes,commercial paper, and/or auction rate securities, depending upon the structural and portfolio characteristics of the company. Credit DerivativeProducts Companies (CDPC) and Structured Investment Vehicles (SIV) are examples, with CDPC taking risk synthetically and SIV withpredominantly 'cash' exposure.

Taxation

The issuer of a CDO—usually a special purpose entity—is typically is a corporation established outside the United States to avoid being subject to U.S.federal income taxation on its global income. These corporations must restrict their activities to avoid U.S. tax; corporations that are deemed to engagein trade or business in the U.S. will be subject to federal taxation.[87] Foreign corporations that only invest in and hold portfolios of U.S. stock and debtsecurities are not. Investing, unlike trading or dealing, is not considered to be a trade or business, regardless of its volume or frequency.[88]

In addition, a safe harbor protects CDO issuers that do trade actively in securities, even though trading in securities technically is a business, providedthe issuer’s activities do not cause it to be viewed as a dealer in securities or engaged in a banking, lending or similar businesses.[89]

CDOs are generally taxable as debt instruments except for the most junior class of CDOs which are treated as equity and are subject to special rules(such as PFIC and CFC reporting). The PFIC and CFC reporting is very complex and requires a specialized accountant to perform these calculations andtax reporting.

Types

A) Based on the underlying asset:

Collateralized loan obligations (CLOs): CDOs backed primarily by leveraged bank loans.Collateralized bond obligations (CBOs): CDOs backed primarily by leveraged fixed income securities.Collateralized synthetic obligations (CSOs): CDOs backed primarily by credit derivatives.Structured finance CDOs (SFCDOs): CDOs backed primarily by structured products (such as asset­backed securities and mortgage­backedsecurities).[90]

B) Other types of CDOs by assets/collateral include:

Commercial Real Estate CDOs (CRE CDOs): backed primarily by commercial real estate assetsCollateralized bond obligations (CBOs): CDOs backed primarily by corporate bonds

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Collateralized Insurance Obligations (CIOs): backed by insurance or, more usually, reinsurance contractsCDO­Squared: CDOs backed primarily by the tranches issued by other CDOs.[90]

CDO^n: Generic term for CDO3 (CDO cubed) and higher, where the CDO is backed by other CDOs/CDO2/CDO3. These are particularly difficultvehicles to model because of the possible repetition of exposures in the underlying CDO.

Types of collateral

The collateral for cash CDOs include:

Structured finance securities (mortgage­backed securities, home equity asset­backed securities, commercial mortgage­backed securities)Leveraged loansCorporate bondsReal estate investment trust (REIT) debtCommercial real estate mortgage debt (including whole loans, B notes, and Mezzanine debt)Emerging­market sovereign debtProject finance debtTrust Preferred securities

Transaction participants

Participants in a CDO transaction include investors, the underwriter, the asset manager, the trustee and collateral administrator, accountants andattorneys. Beginning in 1999, the Gramm­Leach­Bliley Act allowed banks to also participate.

Investors

Investors—buyers of CDO—include insurance companies, mutual fund companies, unit trusts, investment trusts, commercial banks, investment banks,pension fund managers, private banking organizations, other CDOs and structured investment vehicles. Investors have different motivations forpurchasing CDO securities depending on which tranche they select. At the more senior levels of debt, investors are able to obtain better yields than thosethat are available on more traditional securities (e.g., corporate bonds) of a similar rating. In some cases, investors utilize leverage and hope to profitfrom the excess of the spread offered by the senior tranche and their cost of borrowing. This is true because senior tranches pay a spread above LIBORdespite their AAA­ratings. Investors also benefit from the diversification of the CDO portfolio, the expertise of the asset manager, and the credit supportbuilt into the transaction. Investors include banks and insurance companies as well as investment funds.

Junior tranche investors achieve a leveraged, non­recourse investment in the underlying diversified collateral portfolio. Mezzanine notes and equitynotes offer yields that are not available in most other fixed income securities. Investors include hedge funds, banks, and wealthy individuals.

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Underwriter

The underwriter of a CDO is typically an investment bank, and acts as the structurer and arranger. Working with the asset management firm that selectsthe CDO's portfolio, the underwriter structures debt and equity tranches. This includes selecting the debt­to­equity ratio, sizing each tranche, establishingcoverage and collateral quality tests, and working with the credit rating agencies to gain the desired ratings for each debt tranche.

The key economic consideration for an underwriter that is considering bringing a new deal to market is whether the transaction can offer a sufficientreturn to the equity noteholders. Such a determination requires estimating the after­default return offered by the portfolio of debt securities andcomparing it to the cost of funding the CDO's rated notes. The excess spread must be large enough to offer the potential of attractive IRRs to theequityholders.

Other underwriter responsibilities include working with a law firm and creating the special purpose legal vehicle (typically a trust incorporated in theCayman Islands) that will purchase the assets and issue the CDO's tranches. In addition, the underwriter will work with the asset manager to determinethe post­closing trading restrictions that will be included in the CDO's transaction documents and other files.

The final step is to price the CDO (i.e., set the coupons for each debt tranche) and place the tranches with investors. The priority in placement is findinginvestors for the risky equity tranche and junior debt tranches (A, BBB, etc.) of the CDO. It is common for the asset manager to retain a piece of theequity tranche. In addition, the underwriter was generally expected to provide some type of secondary market liquidity for the CDO, especially its moresenior tranches.

According to Thomson Financial, the top underwriters before September 2008 were Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Wachovia, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank,and Bank of America Securities.[91] CDOs are more profitable for underwriters than conventional bond underwriting because of the complexityinvolved. The underwriter is paid a fee when the CDO is issued.

The asset manager

The asset manager plays a key role in each CDO transaction, even after the CDO is issued. An experienced manager is critical in both the constructionand maintenance of the CDO's portfolio. The manager can maintain the credit quality of a CDO's portfolio through trades as well as maximize recoveryrates when defaults on the underlying assets occur.

In theory, the asset manager should add value in the manner outlined below, although in practice, this did not occur during the credit bubble of the mid­2000s (decade). In addition, it is now understood that the structural flaw in all asset­backed securities (originators profit from loan volume not loanquality) make the roles of subsequent participants peripheral to the quality of the investment.

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The asset manager's role begins in the months before a CDO is issued, a bank usually provides financing to the manager to purchase some of thecollateral assets for the forthcoming CDO. This process is called warehousing.

Even by the issuance date, the asset manager often will not have completed the construction of the CDO's portfolio. A "ramp­up" period followingissuance during which the remaining assets are purchased can extend for several months after the CDO is issued. For this reason, some senior CDOnotes are structured as delayed drawdown notes, allowing the asset manager to draw down cash from investors as collateral purchases are made. When atransaction is fully ramped, its initial portfolio of credits has been selected by the asset manager.

However, the asset manager's role continues even after the ramp­up period ends, albeit in a less active role. During the CDO's "reinvestment period",which usually extends several years past the issuance date of the CDO, the asset manager is authorized to reinvest principal proceeds by purchasingadditional debt securities. Within the confines of the trading restrictions specified in the CDO's transaction documents, the asset manager can also maketrades to maintain the credit quality of the CDO's portfolio. The manager also has a role in the redemption of a CDO's notes by auction call.

There are approximately 300 asset managers in the marketplace. CDO Asset Managers, as with other Asset Managers, can be more or less activedepending on the personality and prospectus of the CDO. Asset Managers make money by virtue of the senior fee (which is paid before any of the CDOinvestors are paid) and subordinated fee as well as any equity investment the manager has in the CDO, making CDOs a lucrative business for assetmanagers. These fees, together with underwriting fees, administration—approx 1.5 ­ 2% ­­ by virtue of capital structure are provided by the equityinvestment, by virtue of reduced cashflow.

The trustee and collateral administrator

The trustee holds title to the assets of the CDO for the benefit of the "noteholders" (i.e., the investors). In the CDO market, the trustee also typicallyserves as collateral administrator. In this role, the collateral administrator produces and distributes noteholder reports, performs various compliance testsregarding the composition and liquidity of the asset portfolios in addition to constructing and executing the priority of payment waterfall models.[92] Incontrast to the asset manager, there are relatively few trustees in the marketplace. The following institutions offer trustee services in the CDOmarketplace:

ATC Capital MarketsBank of New York Mellon (note: the Bank of New York Mellon recently also acquired the corporate trust unit of JP Morgan which is the marketshare leader),BNP Paribas Securities Services (note: currently serves the European market only)CitibankDeutsche BankEquity TrustIntertrust Group (note: until mid­2009 was known as Fortis Intertrust)HSBC

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LaSalle Bank (Recently acquired by Bank of America Purchased by US Bank late 2010)Sanne TrustState Street CorporationUS Bank (note: US Bank recently also acquired the corporate trust unit of Wachovia in 2008 and Bank of America in September 2011)Wells FargoWilmington Trust: Wilmington shut down their business in early 2009.

Accountants

The underwriter typically will hire an accounting firm to perform due diligence on the CDO's portfolio of debt securities. This entails verifying certainattributes, such as credit rating and coupon/spread, of each collateral security. Source documents or public sources will typically be used to tie­out thecollateral pool information. In addition, the accountants typically calculate certain collateral tests and determine whether the portfolio is in compliancewith such tests.

The firm may also perform a cash flow tie­out in which the transaction's waterfall is modeled per the priority of payments set forth in the transactiondocuments. The yield and weighted average life of the bonds or equity notes being issued is then calculated based on the modeling assumptions providedby the underwriter. On each payment date, an accounting firm may work with the trustee to verify the distributions that are scheduled to be made to thenoteholders.

Attorneys

Attorneys ensure compliance with applicable securities law and negotiate and draft the transaction documents. Attorneys will also draft an offeringdocument or prospectus the purpose of which is to satisfy statutory requirements to disclose certain information to investors. This will be circulated toinvestors. It is common for multiple counsels to be involved in a single deal because of the number of parties to a single CDO from asset managementfirms to underwriters.

See also

Asset­backed securityCollateralized mortgage obligation (also known by initials CMO)Collateralized fund obligationInside Job (2010 film), a 2010 Oscar­winning documentary film about the financial crisis of 2007–2010 by Charles H. FergusonList of CDO managersCredit default swapSingle­tranche CDO

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Synthetic CDO

References1. An "asset­backed security" is sometimes used as an umbrella term for a type of security backed by a pool of assets—including collateralized debt obligations and

mortgage­backed securities (Example: "The capital market in which asset­backed securities are issued and traded is composed of three main categories: ABS, MBSand CDOs". (italics added) (source: Vink, Dennis. "ABS, MBS and CDO compared: an empirical analysis" (PDF). August 2007. Munich Personal RePEc Archive.Retrieved 13 July 2013.)—and sometimes for a particular type of that security—one backed by consumer loans (example: "As a rule of thumb, securitization issues backed by mortgages arecalled MBS, and securitization issues backed by debt obligations are called CDO, [and] Securitization issues backed by consumer­backed products—car loans,consumer loans and credit cards, among others—are called ABS ... (italics added, source Vink, Dennis. "ABS, MBS and CDO compared: an empirical analysis"(PDF). August 2007. Munich Personal RePEc Archive. Retrieved 13 July 2013.,see also "What are Asset­Backed Securities?". SIFMA. Retrieved 13 July 2013. "Asset­backed securities, called ABS, are bonds or notes backed by financialassets. Typically these assets consist of receivables other than mortgage loans, such as credit card receivables, auto loans, manufactured­housing contracts andhome­equity loans.")

2. Lemke, Lins and Picard, Mortgage­Backed Securities, §5:15 (Thomson West, 2014).3. Koehler, Christian. "The Relationship between the Complexity of Financial Derivatives and Systemic Risk". Working Paper: 17.4. Lemke, Lins and Smith, Regulation of Investment Companies (Matthew Bender, 2014 ed.).5. McLean, Bethany and Joe Nocera, All the Devils Are Here, the Hidden History of the Financial Crisis, Portfolio, Penguin, 2010, p.1206. Final Report of the National Commission on the Causes of the Financial and Economic Crisis in the United States (http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/GPO­FCIC/pdf/GPO­FCIC.pdf), aka The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, p.127

7. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, 2011, p.1308. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, 2011, p.1339. Cresci, Gregory. "Merrill, Citigroup Record CDO Fees Earned in Top Growth Market". August 30, 2005. Bloomberg. Retrieved 11 July 2013.10. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, 2011, p.12911. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, 2011, p.129­3012. McLean and Nocera, All the Devils Are Here, 2010 p.12013. McLean and Nocera, All the Devils Are Here, 2010 p.12114. McLean and Nocera, All the Devils Are Here, 2010 p.12315. Morgenson, Gretchen; Joshua Rosner (2011). Reckless Endangerment : How Outsized ambition, Greed and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon. New York:

Times Books, Henry Holt and Company. p. 283.16. Morgenson and Rosner Reckless Endangerment, 2010 pp.279­28017. McLean and Nocera, All the Devils Are Here, 2010 p.18918. Public Radio International. April 5, 2009. "This American Life": Giant Pool of Money wins Peabody (http://www.pri.org/business/giant­pool­of­money.html)19. "The Giant Pool of Money". This American Life. Episode 355. transcript. May 9, 2008. NPR. CPM.20. of Moody's Analytics21. Zandi, Mark (2009). Financial Shock. FT Press. ISBN 978­0­13­701663­1.22. Hsu, Steve (2005­09­12). "Information Processing: Gaussian copula and credit derivatives". Infoproc.blogspot.com. Retrieved 2013­01­03.

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23. How a Formula Ignited Market That Burned Some Big Investors (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB112649094075137685.html)| Mark Whitehouse| Wall StreetJournal| September 12, 2005

24. "SIFMA, Statistics, Structured Finance, Global CDO Issuance and Outstanding (xls) ­ quarterly data from 2000 to Q2 2013 (issuance), 1990 ­ Q1 2013(outstanding)". Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association. Retrieved 2013­07­10.

25. One study based on a sample of 735 CDO deals originated between 1999 and 2007, found the percentage of CDO assets made up of lower level tranches from non­prime mortgage­backed securities (nonprime means subprime and other less­than­prime mortgages, mainly Alt­A mortgages) grew from 5% to 36%. (source: AnnaKatherine Barnett­Hart The Story of the CDO Market Meltdown: An Empirical Analysis­March 2009 (http://www.hks.harvard.edu/m­rcbg/students/dunlop/2009­CDOmeltdown.pdf))

26. Other sources give an even higher proportion. In the fall of 2005 Gene Park, an executive at AIG Financial Products division found, "The percentage of subprimesecurities in the CDOs wasn't 10 percent ­­ it was 85 percent!" (source: McLean and Nocera, All the Devils Are Here, 2010 (p.201)

27. An email by Park to his superior is also quoted in the Financial Crisis Inquiry Report p.201: "The CDO of the ABS market ... is currently at a state where dealsare almost totally reliant on subprime/nonprime mortgage residential mortgage collateral."

28. Still another source (The Big Short, Michael Lewis, p.71) says:"The `consumer loans` piles that Wall Street firms, led by Goldman Sachs, asked AIG FP to insure went from being 2% subprime mortgages to being 95%subprime mortgages. In a matter of months, AIG­FP, in effect, bought $50 billion in triple­B­rated subprime mortgage bonds by insuring them against default. Andyet no one said anything about it ..."

29. In 2007, 47% of CDOs were backed by structured products, such as mortgages; 45% of CDOs were backed by loans, and only less than 10% of CDOs were backedby fixed income securities. (source: Securitization rankings of bookrunners, issuers, etc. (http://www.abalert.com/Public/MarketPlace/Ranking/index.cfm?files=disp&article_id=1044676277)

30. "Moody's and S&P to bestow[ed] triple­A ratings on roughly 80% of every CDO." (source: The Big Short, Michael Lewis, p.207­8)31. The Big Short, Michael Lewis, pp. 207–832. Anna Katherine Barnett­Hart The Story of the CDO Market Meltdown: An Empirical Analysis­March 2009 (http://www.hks.harvard.edu/m­

rcbg/students/dunlop/2009­CDOmeltdown.pdf)­Cited by Michael Lewis in The Big Short33. "SEC Broadens CDO Probes". June 15th, 2011. Global Economic Intersection. Retrieved 8 February 2014. "[Includes] graph and table from Pro Publica [that]

show the size and institutional reach of the Magnetar CDOs [versus the whole CDO market]."34. "Collateralized Debt Obligations Market" (Press release). Celent. 2005­10­31. Retrieved 2009­02­23.35. Benmelech, Efraim; Jennifer Dlugosz (2009). "The Credit Rating Crisis" (PDF). NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2009, (in Volume 24). National Bureau of

Economic Research, NBER Macroeconomics Annual.36. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, 2011, p.134, section="Leverage is inherent in CDOs"37. Morgenson and Rosner Reckless Endangerment, 2010 p.27838. see also Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, p.12739. 70%. "Firms bought mortgage­backed bonds with the very highest yields they could find and reassembled them into new CDOs. The original bonds ... could be

lower­rated securities that once reassembled into a new CDO would wind up with as much as 70% of the tranches rated triple­A. Ratings arbitrage, Wall Streetcalled this practice. A more accurate term would have been ratings laundering." (source: McLean and Nocera, All the Devils Are Here, 2010 p.122)

40. 80%. "Approximately 80% of these CDO tranches would be rated triple A despite the fact that they generally comprised the lower­rated tranches of mortgage­backed securities. (source: The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, 2011, p.127

41. 80%. "In a CDO you gathered a 100 different mortgage bonds—usually the riskiest lower floors of the original tower ...... They bear a lower credit rating triple B.... if you could somehow get them rerated as triple A, thereby lowering their perceived risk, however dishonestly and artificially. This is what Goldman Sachs hadcleverly done. is was absurd. The 100 buildings occupied the same floodplain; in the event of flood, the ground floors of all of them were equally exposed. But

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never mind: the rating agencies, who were paid fat fees by Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street firms for each deal they rated, pronounced 80% of the new towerof debt triple­A." (source: Michael Lewis, The Big Short : Inside the Doomsday Machine WW Norton and Co, 2010, p.73)

42. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, 2011, p.10343. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, 2011, p.10444. Morgenson and Rosner Reckless Endangerment, 2010 p.28045. see also: Bloomberg­Flawed Credit Ratings Reap Profits as Regulators Fail Investors­April 2009 (http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?

pid=newsarchive&sid=a6NdKd8CfR2A)46. McLean and Nocera, All the Devils Are Here, p.12447. PBS­Credit and Credibility­December 2008 (http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/446/index.html)48. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, 2011, p.13249. "Unlike the traditional cash CDO, synthetic CDOs contained no actual tranches of mortgage­backed securities ... in the place of real mortgage assets, these CDOs

contained credit default swaps and did not finance a single home purchase." (source: The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, 2011, p.142)50. The Magnetar Trade: How One Hedge Fund Helped Keep the Bubble Going (Single Page)­April 2010 (http://www.propublica.org/feature/all­the­magnetar­trade­

how­one­hedge­fund­helped­keep­the­housing­bubble)51. Final Report of the National Commission on the Causes of the Financial and Economic Crisis in the United States (http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/GPO­

FCIC/pdf/GPO­FCIC.pdf), p.229, figure 11.452. The Big Short (http://books.google.com/books?id=TNarLsnZyPoC&pg=PA95&lpg=PA95&dq=summer+of+2006,+the+Case­

Shiller+index+of+house+prices+michael+lewis&source=bl&ots=vNPJ5­udD_&sig=RwEIdDGCuDIjTSCoCrZ5_2mxL60&hl=en&sa=X&ei=xWvoUaj5OqaSyAHcnoDIAw&ved=0CEIQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=summer%20of%202006%2C%20the%20Case­Shiller%20index%20of%20house%20prices%20michael%20lewis&f=false), Michael Lewis, p.95

53. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, 2011, p.87, figure 6.254. Michael Lewis, The Big Short, p.94­755. Lewis, Michael, The Big Short56. "CDOh no! (see "Subprime performance" chart)". The Economist. 8 November 2007.57. By the first quarter of 2008, rating agencies announced 4,485 downgrades of CDOs. source: Aubin, Dena (2008­04­09). "CDO deals resurface but down 90 pct in

Q1­report". Reuters.58. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, 2011, p.14859. "Bear Stearns Tells Fund Investors 'No Value Left' (Update3)". Bloomberg. 2007­07­18.60. Many CDOs are marked to market and thus experienced substantial write­downs as their market value collapsed during the subprime crisis, with banks writing

down the value of their CDO holdings mainly in the 2007­2008 period.61. Eavis, Peter (2007­10­24). "Merrill's $3.4 billion balance sheet bomb". CNN. Retrieved 2010­04­30.62. "Herd's head trampled". The Economist. 2007­10­30.63. "Citigroup chief executive resigns". BBC News. 2007­11­05. Retrieved 2010­04­30.64. "Merrill sells assets seized from hedge funds". CNN. June 20, 2007. Retrieved May 24, 2010.65. "Timeline: Sub­prime losses". BBC. May 19, 2008. Retrieved May 24, 2010.66. http://www.sifma.org/research/pdf/SIFMA_CDOIssuanceData2008.pdf67. Aubin, Dena (2008­04­09). "CDO deals resurface but down 90 pct in Q1­report". Reuters.68. nearly USD 1 trillion in mortgage bonds in 2006 alone69. McLean, Bethany (2007­03­19). "The dangers of investing in subprime debt". Fortune.

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70. "Warren Buffet on Derivatives" (PDF). Following are edited excerpts from the Berkshire Hathaway annual report for 2002. fintools.com.71. Raghu Rajan analyses subprime crisis (http://mostlyeconomics.wordpress.com/2008/01/22/raghu­rajan­analyses­subprime­crisis/)| Mostly Economics| (from a

speech given on December 17, 2007)72. Wall Street Wizardry Amplified Risk (http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB119871820846351717), Wall Street Journal, December 27, 200773. Ng, Serena, and Mollenkamp, Carrick. "A Fund Behind Astronomical Losses (http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB120027155742887331)," (Magnetar) Wall

Street Journal, January 14, 2008.74. Morgenson, Gretchen; Joshua Rosner (2011). Reckless Endangerment : How Outsized ambition, Greed and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon. New York:

Times Books, Henry Holt and Company. p. 278.75. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, 2011, p.118­12176. Bloomberg­Smith­Bringing Down Ratings Let Loose Subprime Scourge (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=ah839IWTLP9s)77. Bloomberg­Smith­Race to Bottom at Rating Agencies Secured Subprime Boom, Bust (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=ax3vfya_Vtdo)78. Morgenson and Rosner, Reckless Endangerment, 2010 p.280­179. Lewis, Michael (2010). The Big Short : Inside the Doomsday Machine. W.W. Norton & Company. p. 73. ISBN 978­0­393­07223­5.80. All the Devils Are Here, MacLean and Nocera, p.1981. Mortgage lending using securitization is sometimes referred to as the originate­to­distribute approach, in contrast to the traditional originate­to­hold approach. (The

Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, 2011, p.89)82. Koehler, Christian. "The Relationship between the Complexity of Financial Derivatives and Systemic Risk". Working Paper: 42.83. Koehler, Christian. "The Relationship between the Complexity of Financial Derivatives and Systemic Risk". Working Paper: 12–13.84. Koehler, Christian. "The Relationship between the Complexity of Financial Derivatives and Systemic Risk". Working Paper: 13.85. Koehler, Christian. "The Relationship between the Complexity of Financial Derivatives and Systemic Risk". Working Paper: 19.86. http://archives1.sifma.org/assets/files/SIFMA_CDOIssuanceData2007q1.pdf87. PEASLEE, JAMES M. & DAVID Z. NIRENBERG. FEDERAL INCOME TAXATION OF SECURITIZATION TRANSACTIONS AND RELATED TOPICS. Frank J. Fabozzi Associates (2011, with

periodic supplements, www.securitizationtax.com): 1018.88. Peaslee & Nirenberg. Federal Income Taxation of Securitization Transactions, 1023.89. Peaslee & Nirenberg. Federal Income Taxation of Securitization Transactions, 1026.90. Paddy Hirsch (October 3, 2008). Crisis explainer: Uncorking CDOs. American Public Media.91. Dealbook. "Citi and Merrill Top Underwriting League Tables". January 2, 2008,. New York Times. Retrieved 16 July 2013.92. Two notable exceptions to this are Virtus Partners and Wilmington Trust Conduit Services, a subsidiary of Wilmington Trust, which offer collateral administration

services, but are not trustee banks.

External links

How a CDO is like a bottle of Champagne. From Marketplace (http://marketplace.publicradio.org/videos/whiteboard/uncorking_cdos.shtml)Global Pool of Money and CDOs (NPR radio) (http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=90327686&m=90327669)The Story of the CDO Market Meltdown: An Empirical Analysis­Anna Katherine Barnett­Hart­March 2009­Cited by Michael Lewis in "The BigShort" (http://www.hks.harvard.edu/m­rcbg/students/dunlop/2009­CDOmeltdown.pdf)CDO Diagram­Bionic Turtle (http://www.bionicturtle.com/how­to/article/cash_collateralized_debt_obligation_cdo/)

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CDO and RMBS Diagram­FCIC and IMF (http://www.fcic.gov/hearings/pdfs/2010­0602­aaa­assets­chart.pdf)What's a CDO? Interactive Graphic ­ December 2007 (http://upstart.bizjournals.com/multimedia/interactives/2007/12/cdo.html)"Investment Landfill" (http://goldnews.bullionvault.com/files/Investment_Landfill.pdf)Mezzanine Debt (http://www.mezzaninedebt.org/)Portfolio.com explains what CDOs are in an easy­to­understand multimedia graphic (http://www.portfolio.com/interactive­features/2007/12/cdo)The Making of a Mortgage CDO (http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info­flash07.html?project=normaSubprime0712&h=530&w=980&hasAd=1&settings=normaSubprime0712) multimedia graphic from The Wall Street JournalJPRI Occasional Paper No. 37, October 2007 Risk vs Uncertainty: The Cause of the Current Financial Crisis By Marshall Auerback(http://www.jpri.org/publications/occasionalpapers/op37.html)Collateralized debt obligations: who's to blame when the market blows up? ­ Summer, 2007(http://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/168163227.html)How credit cards become asset­backed bonds. From Marketplace (http://marketplace.publicradio.org/videos/whiteboard/securitization.shtml)Vink, Dennis and Thibeault, André (2008). "ABS, MBS and CDO Compared: An Empirical Analysis" [[Journal of Structured Finance|TheJournal of Structured Finance (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1016854)]"A tsunami of hope or terror?", Alan Kohler, Nov 19, 2008. (http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/A­tsunami­of­hope­or­terror­LHRJP)Collateralized Debt Obligations at Wikinvest

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