A mortgage loan repurchase facility (more casually referred to as a "repo") is a financing structure commonly utilized to finance mortgage loans. These facilities are utilized by both residential and commercial mortgage loan originators and aggregators to finance mortgage loans that they originate or acquire. The structure is favored by liquidity providers in the mortgage loan finance arena due to its preferential "safe harbor" treatment under the United States Bankruptcy Code (the "Bankruptcy Code"), as further described below.
In a highly-anticipated decision on a long-running bondholder dispute, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued its judgment last week in Marblegate Asset Management LLC v Education Management Corp. It concluded that “Section 316(b) [of the US Trust Indenture Act 1939] prohibits only non-consensual amendments to an indenture’s core payment terms”, i.e. the amount of principal and interest owed and the maturity date.