NEW YORK (Reuters) - a coalition of seven major public pension systems headed by the Comptroller of the city of New York John Liu, called boards of Directors of four of the largest U.S. banks to review their mortgage and foreclosure practices.
In a letter dated 6 January, pension fund coalition urged the audit committees of Bank of America Corp. (BAC)(N) Citigroup Inc. (C.N), JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM).(N) and Wells Fargo L & Co (WFC).(N) to launch independent reviews their policies change, foreclosure and loan securitization and procedures.
"This will help prevent future compliance failures and restore the confidence of shareholders, regulators, legislators and participants in mortgage markets," the coalition said in the letter.
Bank representatives could be drawn for immediate comment on Sunday.
January 7, in a decision that could slow seized nationwide, High Court in Massachusetts, cancelled the seizure of two homes by Wells Fargo & Co and US Bancorp after banks has not demonstrated that they held the mortgage at the time that they precluded.
Which sends fears market investors worried that the decision could threaten ability of lenders to work by hundreds of thousands of pending foreclosures.
Unanimous decision of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts upheld a lower court decision and was among the first cases to deal with the validity of seizures is without proper documentation.
This issue, including the use of 'robo signatories' approved documents for foreclosure without them, consider last year prompted an outcry leading lenders as Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Ally Financial Inc. to stop temporarily seize homes.
Courts in other States are considering similar cases and all 50 state attorneys general are examining whether lenders require their houses people improperly.
Pension fund coalition represents more than 430 billion in pension fund investments, including $ 5.7 billion invested in the four banks.
Liu represents five NYC pension funds. The coalition also includes the Connecticut retirement plans and trust funds, the Illinois State Board of investment, the retirement system of the State of Illinois universities of retirement common fund of New York State, North Carolina retirement systems and the Oregon Public employees retirement fund.
The coalition has called for banks to report the results of their independent reviews in their 2011 proxy statements this spring.
At the end of last year, the coalition of the handset of the shareholdings in each Bank included: Bank of America shares 97.1 million to 1.3 billion; 226.6 million shares of Citigroup at 1.1 billion; 40.7 million shares of JPMorgan Chase at $ 1.7 billion and the shares of Wells Fargo 50.6 million to $ 1.6 billion.
(Report of Ilaina Jonas;) (Editing by Tim Dobbyn)
No comments:
Post a Comment