Goldman Sachs Group Inc, Morgan Stanley and two other banks may agree as soon as this week to settle claims over botched foreclosures in an accord similar to one reached with 10 other loan servicers, two people briefed on the discussions said.
The agreement, also involving HSBC Holdings Inc and Ally Financial Inc, would end case-by-case reviews of foreclosures under earlier accords with the biggest mortgage servicers, said the people, who declined to be identified because the talks are private. The US Federal Reserve-led discussions specified at least US$1.5 billion in cash and assistance for borrowers, one of the people said.
Ten servicers agreed on Monday to a US$8.5 billion settlement with the Fed and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) that ends the outside reviews in exchange for a deal that limits their costs to US$3.3 billion in cash for foreclosures in 2009 and 2010, and US$5.2 billion in other mortgage-related aid.
The new settlement could bring the industry payout to US$10 billion and expands beyond the 14 firms required to review foreclosures under the April 2011 agreement.
IndyMac Bancorp’s successor OneWest Bank FSB, and EverBank Financial Corp have yet to reach settlements with regulators.
“We continue to have conversations with the servicers we regulate who were under April 2011 enforcement actions but were not part of the settlement,” OCC spokesman Bryan Hubbard said. OneWest, EverBank and HSBC are included, he said.
Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley entered the mortgage servicing business through acquisitions. Goldman Sachs bought Litton Loan Servicing LP in 2007, and Morgan Stanley bought Saxon Capital Inc in 2006, before a housing market collapse that led to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.
Litton initiated 135,586 foreclosure actions in 2009 and 2010, and Saxon initiated at least 60,313 actions in the same period, according to the Fed. Both New York-based banks later sold the servicers.
Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs were separately ordered by the Fed to hire outside consultants to conduct foreclosure reviews. Their case-by-case reviews paralleled those ordered in the April 2011 settlement.
Eric Kollig, a Fed spokesman, declined to comment on settlement talks. Mary Claire Delaney, a Morgan Stanley spokeswoman, and Michael DuVally, a Goldman Sachs spokesman, also declined to comment.
HSBC “remains in discussions” with regulators, according to Neil Brazil, a spokesman, who declined to comment further.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained