by Calculated Risk on 7/06/2009 11:54:00 AM

Just a quick update on the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF) for Commercial Mortgage Backed Securities (CMBS).

At the end of last week, the NY Fed announced a TALF CMBS auction on July 16th. The details are here.

Many market participants expected the Fed to include CMBS "originally rated AAA" because S&P has recently placed a large number of CMBS on watch for downgrade. This did not happen and is apparently a shock to many participants.

The Fed updated the terms and conditions. The Fed is really restricting legacy eligibility:

TALF loans for legacy CMBS will be usedrequired to fund recent secondary market transactions between unaffiliated parties that are executed on an arm’s length basis.

One participant told me that all potential trades are being heavily scrutinized too:

"[Y]ou cannot leverage a bond you already own, and you can't sell and buyback a bond you already own to create a trade. That's an interesting twist."

Clarification: July 16 is the first operation for Legacy TALF, which provides loans against Legacy CMBS securities. Legacy securities were issued before January 1 2009.

The new issue CMBS program, for securities issued after January 1 2009, started in June.

The first TALF CMBS auction on June 16th attracted no interest.