Credit Suisse subpoenaed by SEC: court document

By Tom Hals

WILMINGTON, Delaware (Reuters) - Credit Suisse was subpoenaed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission this week for documents related to securitized home loans, according to court documents filed on Thursday by a bond insurer suing Credit Suisse.

The bond insurer, MBIA Inc, said in a court filing that "Credit Suisse is now the subject of an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which issued a subpoena this week seeking the same types of documents as MBIA seeks."

MBIA included the information in a motion seeking to force Credit Suisse to turn over documents related to loans that it securitized into bonds that were insured by MBIA.

MBIA spokesman Kevin Brown said his company's counsel, Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP, was also served a subpoena by the SEC.

The SEC did not immediately return a call for comment.

MBIA is suing Credit Suisse and several other Wall Street banks for fraudulently inducing it to ensure bonds back home loans that did not conform to state guidelines.

Those bonds were sold with top-notch credit ratings, but in many cases quickly soured as the U.S. housing market collapsed.

The documents filed on Thursday provided a trove of email exchanges about loans, some of which defaulted soon after they were made.

One includes a discussion of whether it makes sense for a "stripper" to get $142,000 a year in cash but not have a bank account. Another involves a $1 million home loan for a property listed at $695,000 on which there was never a mortgage payment.

(Reporting by Tom Hals. Editing by Robert MacMillan, Bernard Orr)