The Federal Reserve Bank of New York today announced that it has sold $7.014 billion in face amount of assets from its Maiden Lane II LLC (ML II) portfolio through a competitive process to Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC.

The transaction was prompted by an unsolicited offer from Goldman Sachs & Co. to BlackRock Solutions, the investment manager for ML II, in January 2012, to buy a portion of ML II assets. Consistent with its March 2011 announcement regarding the disposition procedures for ML II, which allowed for these types of reverse inquiries, the New York Fed directed BlackRock Solutions to conduct a sale via a competitive process. The four broker-dealers included in the competitive process were Barclays Capital Inc., Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC, Goldman Sachs & Co. and Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated. The broker-dealers were selected based on their previous expressions of interest for large parcels of the portfolio and/or their participation in the ML II bid list process conducted last year...