Bulk Of TALF-Eligible Deals Sold Ahead Of Loan Deadline

American Home Mortgage Advance Trust is the latest to sell a bond ahead of the eighth loan application deadline for a Federal Reserve program.

Friday is the deadline for investors to procure cheap funds from the central bank to buy newly created consumer loan-backed bonds through its Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, or TALF. Deals worth about $6.5 billion were issued ahead of this deadline.

American Home Mortgage's deal sold at 195 basis points over the one-month London interbank offered rate, or Libor. Joint leads on the deal were Deutsche Bank and RBS.

Earlier Thursday, Harley Davidson Inc.'s (HOG) $700 million deal also sold, according to a person familiar with the matter. The deal, dubbed HDMOT 2009-3, had four tranches. The largest triple-A rated tranche sold at 35 basis points over a short-term futures benchmark.

Citi Financial Auto sold its $1.40 billion auto-sector deal, according to a people familiar with the deal. The bond is dubbed CFAIT 2009-1 and its largest triple-A rated tranche worth $570 million sold at 125 basis points over a short-term futures benchmark, in line with guidance.

The Fed's efforts to support the securitization market, where consumer loans are packaged into bonds for sale to investors, has helped rejuvenate it. The process of securitization aided the ramping up of credit and helped fuel the lending boom that came to an abrupt halt with the credit crisis.

More than $100 billion in such deals have been sold since the launch of the TALF program in March, with the bulk being eligible for the Fed's facility. About $15 billion in bonds sold in the last round of TALF loan applications in September.

The attractive terms of the program, where investors can walk away from the loans if anything goes awry, has drawn them to this market.

Other issuers this time around include Mercedes-Benz Financial and Ford Motor Co. (F), both of which sold deals earlier this week.

Mercedes's deal is dubbed MBART 09-1, and its largest triple-A tranche worth $445 million sold at 30 basis points over a benchmark, in line with guidance. Joint leads on the bond are Barclays Capital and JP Morgan.

Ford Motor's $1.5 billion dealer floorplan-backed bond was called FORDF 09-2. It priced at 155 basis points over one-month Libor. The deal was increased in size from an original $1 billion. Joint leads on the deal are Barclays Capital and Morgan Stanley.

-By Anusha Shrivastava, Dow Jones Newswires; 212-416-2227; [e-mail]