In August, Cleary Gottlieb represented the underwriters in 20 Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae and Ginnie Mae mortgage-backed transactions, representing over $13.8 billion of mortgage-backed securities. The underwriters included Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Jefferies, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Mizuho and Nomura. This activity brings total agency mortgage-backed deals handled by the firm in 2016 to more than $77.9 billion.
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.