For nonconforming high-risk MBS, those not backed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, the share held by European investors was in the order of 29 percent.7 In 2006, at the height of the US mortgage securitization boom, a third of newly issued private label MBS were backed by British or European banks.8 The segment of the securitization chain in which European banks were of truly crucial importance was also the weakest link in the chain, ABCP.
