Morgan Keegan to Offer Farmer Mac Programs to Commercial Banking Clients
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From A Press Release
March, 11 2010 – The Federal
Agricultural Mortgage Corporation (Farmer Mac; NYSE:
AGM and AGM.A) and Morgan Keegan & Company, a regional investment firm
in Memphis, Tennessee, today announced that they have entered into an
agreement under which Morgan Keegan will begin marketing Farmer Mac programs
designed specifically for Morgan Keegan's commercial banking clients that
hold agricultural mortgage loans in their portfolios.
The primary program to be offered through Morgan Keegan's Fixed Income
Capital Markets division will be Farmer Mac's Long-Term Standby Purchase
Commitment (LTSPC), which allows banks to improve their capital position by
shifting the credit risk on pools of agricultural real estate loans from the
bank to Farmer Mac.
Loans placed in the LTSPC program are expected to receive favorable capital
treatment, thereby freeing up the bank's capital for other purposes.
"Farmer Mac's LTSPC program is designed to give
agricultural banks a reasonably priced option to improve a major indicator
of their financial health and to help restore their ability to continue to
grow their balance sheets," stated Michael A. Gerber, President and CEO of
Farmer Mac.
"We are pleased that after examining the LTSPC program
and obtaining a thorough understanding of its benefits, the members of
Morgan Keegan's management team have made the decision to add it to their
suite of offerings for appropriate business clients. This arrangement
allows us to effectively expand our marketing efforts and expose more
agricultural lending institutions to the benefits that Farmer Mac can
provide."
"Morgan Keegan is pleased to introduce Farmer Mac's
LTSPC program to community depository institutions making agricultural loans
throughout the U.S. This program will allow us to add value for our clients
through creative solutions for the balance sheet," said Dodd Williams, CFA,
managing director with Morgan Keegan Fixed Income Capital Markets.
Farmer Mac is a stockholder-owned instrumentality of the
United States chartered by Congress to establish a secondary market for
agricultural real estate and rural housing mortgage loans and rural
utilities loans and to facilitate capital market funding for USDA-guaranteed
farm program and rural development loans.
Additional information about Farmer Mac is available on
its website at
www.farmermac.com. Farmer Mac II LLC is a recently-organized Delaware
limited liability company, in which Farmer Mac owns all of the common
equity, that is now operating the Farmer Mac II business of purchasing and
holding USDA-guaranteed loans. Additional information about Farmer Mac II
LLC is available on its website at
www.farmermac2.com.
Morgan
Keegan & Company is the investment and securities brokerage subsidiary of
Regions Financial Corporation. With $142 billion in assets, Regions is a
member of the S&P 100 index and one of the nation's largest full-service
providers of consumer and commercial banking, trust, securities brokerage,
asset management, mortgage and insurance products and services. Morgan
Keegan's Fixed Income Capital Markets division is recognized as one of the
largest institutional fixed income operations outside of Wall Street,
encompassing more than 500 professionals in bond research, sales, trading,
underwriting and investment banking.
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