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Financial Services Law Insights and Observations

International bank must maintain $500 million bond securing $806 million RMBS judgment

Courts FHFA RMBS Bond U.S. Supreme Court Fannie Mae Freddie Mac

Courts

On July 5, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York issued a memorandum opinion and order stating that an international bank must maintain the $500 million bond it had filed in 2015 to secure $806 million in damages owed to the Federal Housing Finance Agency for selling allegedly faulty residential mortgage-backed securities to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The court had stayed execution of the judgment pending appeal, and the stay expired on July 5, following the Supreme Court’s denial without comment of the bank’s petition for writ of certiorari. (See previous InfoBytes coverage here.) According to the district court opinion and order, the bank maintained that the stay order required the bond to remain in effect only through July 5, even though the bank was not required to pay the final judgment until July 20. The court disagreed, explaining that a “more natural reading of the [s]tay [o]rder and the [b]ond together is that the [b]ond must remain in place until two conditions are met: (1) the stay of execution ends and (2) the [f]inal [j]udgment is satisfied. Condition 1 has now been met, but not condition 2.” The court added that the bank is free to satisfy the final judgment prior to its July 20 due date, at which point the bond could be dissolved prematurely.