In January, Cleary Gottlieb represented the underwriters, including Bank of America, Barclays, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Greenwich, and JP Morgan Chase, in 8 Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae and Ginnie Mae mortgage-backed transactions, representing more than $3.9 billion of mortgage-backed securities.
In general, the “agency” transactions involve the issuance of mortgage-backed securities, in each case guaranteed by Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae or Ginnie Mae. Ginnie Mae is part of the U.S. government, while Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are government-sponsored, publicly-owned companies. In each transaction, the underlying assets were residential mortgage loans. The cash flows on these mortgages support the issuance of securities. The securities were issued in multiple classes, with some of the deals issuing more than 50 classes.