The first mortgage issuers to die were in the bottom tier.2 The aptly named Ownit Mortgage Solutions, one of the feeders for Merrill Lynch’s securitization pipeline, was the first to go, on January 3, 2007. On February 8, 2007, the crisis moved up the food chain when HSBC, whose offices spanned Hong Kong, Shanghai and London, announced it was making a $10.6 billion provision for losses on mortgage investments.
