A look at the major activity in structured finance over the past seven days.

Pipeline
The first week of the year brought a return to life for the pipeline. There were two new ABS announced, as well as three RMBS.

¥40bn Driver Japan Six and US$810.39m Hyundai Auto Lease Securitization Trust 2017-A were the ABS. The RMBS were RUB7.4bn Mortgage Agent Vozrozhdenie 5, SapphireOne Mortgages 2016-3 (reoffer) and US$343.3m Sequoia Mortgage Trust 2017-1.

Editor's picks
Macy's, Sears closures affect CMBS: Macy's has revealed a list of 68 stores that it will close in the near term, while Sears has announced it will close 150 Sears and K-Mart stores. There are CMBS implications for both...
Slew of risk transfer trades close: A handful of capital relief trades closed in late December, including an unusual deal referencing a portfolio of auto loans. While this transaction was unfunded, the other deals involved the issuance of credit-linked notes...
NAIC designations for actual loss CAS: The NAIC has assigned designations to all of Fannie Mae's CAS risk transfer transactions for its 2016 filing year, except for two. It is the first time that actual loss CAS deals have received NAIC designations...
Cash versus synthetic weighed: Balance sheet securitisations - whereby balance sheet relief is achieved via true sale - are gaining traction in Europe (SCI 25 August 2016). The different motivations for executing a cash versus a synthetic capital relief trade were discussed recently at SCI's Capital Relief Trades Seminar...

Deal news
• Deutsche Bank is considering whether to exercise its option, as issuer, to redeem the Craft 2013-1 and Craft 2013-2 securities prior to their scheduled maturity date. Craft 2013-1 comprises US$840m floating rate notes due 2022 and Craft 2013-2 comprises €150m floating rate notes due 2022.
• Trustees of Arena 2012-I are seeking investor consent for early redemption of the A2 tranche. The bonds were publicly placed and pay a relatively high coupon of three-month Euribor plus 115bp (see SCI's new issuance database).
• Opus Bank has securitised US$509m of its multifamily loans through a Freddie Mac-sponsored 'Q-deal' securitisation. One class of Freddie-guaranteed notes was issued and purchased by Opus.
• Freddie Mac last month issued one last ACIS transaction of 2016. It was the second ACIS not linked to STACR debt note bonds and attracted a record number of reinsurers.

Regulatory update
• A meeting of the Basel Committee group of central bank governors and heads of supervision (GHOS), originally planned for early January, has been postponed. The Committee says that more time is needed to finalise the Basel 3 framework's final calibration, before the GHOS can review the package of proposals, although it expects to complete this work "in the near future".
• Securitisation of European SME loans would not necessarily lead to lower credit standards, according to the BIS. In a recent paper, analysts at the bank also suggest that while risk retention rules might be necessary for larger transactions due to the presence of moral hazard, such retention rules aren't necessary for smaller firms.