The next round of mortgage bonds in the U.S. portfolio of ING Group (ING) is headed to auction today. The bond market anticipated the sale all week long, though it may not manifest exactly as hoped.
Despite wide interest in the bonds, the paper is only being offered to six broker dealers.
The Dutch State Treasury Agency, which contracted BlackRock Solutions to handle the bidding process, said the six entities were selected based on the strength of their pre-bid applications.
The six broker dealers are Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAC), Barclays (B), Citigroup (C), Credit Suisse (CS), Goldman Sachs (GS) and Morgan Stanley (MS).
Bids close on January 16. The portion of the portfolio that is being auctioned is valued at close to $4.27 billion on 360 non-agency residential-mortgage backed securities.
ING is a Dutch investment firm and insurer. It received a bailout from the Netherlands and is liquidating all non-core, non-insurance assets as part of the conservatorship.
Last month, the DTSA successfully sold around $5.1 billion of the ING US $11.6 billion RMBS portfolio. The remaining $6.5 billion is comprised mainly of adjustable-rate Alt-A, fixed rate Alt-A and prime-adjustable rate mortgages. The DTSA has not released publicly the collateral specifics for today's $4.27 billion auction.
