The asset backed securities market now covers a broad array of instrument-types, bond market sectors and underlying collateral pools, including credit cards, auto loans, mortgages, leases, trade receivables, bank loans and more exotic assets and future flows. Bonds securitized on such collateral are now issued in most domestic and international bond markets, in the US, Europe and Asia. And alongside the bond markets, there is now a huge market in asset backed commercial paper, worth $500 billion in the US alone. A handful of firms are active participants across these markets and sectors, including Salomon Smith Barney, Morgan Stanley, Lehman, Chase, Deutsche and Merrill, alongside this year's winner CSFB, which has had a particularly successful 12 months putting it high in the league tables.
"One of the aspects which distinguishes us is that, with large presences in all these capital markets, it is a matter almost of indifference to us as to where we execute deals for clients. We're not going to push Euromarket deals simply because that's where we are," says Joseph Donovan co-head of asset finance, Americas, at CSFB. He mentions as an example of this approach the global mortgage bond programme CSFB arranged for St George Bank.