Are securitization jobs going to make a comeback?
Not long ago, it looked very, very bad for anyone working in, or recently removed from, a role related to securitization. In January Jamie Dimon pronounced the profession dead and buried, saying: “When we look back at industry excesses in areas such as highly leveraged lending and securitization, it is clear that some of these markets will never come back.” Maybe, though, Jamie spoke too soon. In both Europe and the UK, securitization is running at record levels. In the UK, for example, domestic lenders securitized €221bn ($292bn) of mortgages in 2008, nearly double the €130bn issuance in 2007 and €123bn in 2006. Unfortunately, it’s unwise to read too much into these figures. In both the UK and Europe, MBS issuance has been artificially sustained by the Bank of England and ECB, which have allowed banks to swap highly rated mortgage backed assets for more liquid government bonds. Fabrice Susini, global head of securitization at BNP Paribas, says most of these repo deals with central ban
