The recent upheaval of the structured-finance market is giving a new look to the industry's underwriter league tables.

With the flow of new mortgage-related bond offerings choked off by investor fears about the underlying credits, the investment banks that focused their securitization-underwriting efforts on that once-high-flying sector naturally saw their activities drop off. The result: Many have lost their places atop Asset-Backed Alert's bookrunner rankings.

Displacing them are the players with diverse books of business, typically those managing sizable volumes of credit-card and auto-loan securities on behalf of clients and affiliates.

Among underwriters working on various structured-finance instruments worldwide, the effect has been most prominent on those handling U.S. asset-backed securities. In that category, J.P. Morgan is pulling into the final three months of the year as the number-one bookrunner, with Citigroup close on its heels.

J.P. Morgan managed $52.1 billion of asset-backed issues in the States over the first nine months of this year, accounting for 10% of the market. A year ago, it ranked fifth with a 6.9% market share.

A big part of the bank's rise is tied to its activities as an underwriter of credit-card and auto-loan securitizations, where issuance volume has remained relatively stable even as mortgage-related deals have vanished. In fact, J.P. Morgan's year-to-date bookrunning total in the U.S. asset-backed securities sector is up by nearly 13% from a year ago - defying a 23% drop in overall deal output, to $519 billion from $674 billion.

Citi has earned $50.4 billion of U.S. league-table credit so far this year, for a 9.7% market share. The bank also ranked second at this point in 2006, before moving up to the top spot at yearend. However, its 2007 tally is down some 14% from a year ago.

Elsewhere, Bank of America shot up to third place, from 10th, and Morgan Stanley moved up to fourth, from eighth - each with $39 billion of underwriting mandates. Fifth place belongs to RBS Greenwich, which was the number-three underwriter a year ago.

RBS' swoon reflects how banks whose securitization-underwriting desks rely heavily on mortgage-related issues have slid in the standings. The same goes for Lehman Brothers, which was in first place a year ago but now occupies seventh place. Credit Suisse and Bear Stearns also lost ground.

The decreased supply of new asset-backed securities in the U.S. is due mainly to a lack of deals backed by subprime mortgages and home-equity loans, the now-beaten-down asset classes that had driven rapid growth in the market in recent years. Asset-Backed Alert's U.S. tally excludes CDOs, bonds backed by prime-quality mortgages and commercial MBS.

Citi would have finished first in the U.S. underwriter ranking if it excluded underwriting assignments from the bookrunners' affiliates. The bank had managed $29.5 billion of third-party deals as of Sept. 30, followed by J.P. Morgan and Deutsche Bank.

In many other areas of the securitization business, a common theme has emerged: Activity has cooled off substantially since midyear, when the subprime-mortgage market's troubles began morphing into a global credit crisis. In some sectors of the market, however, that trend has been masked by a rush of early-year transactions.

At $1.8 trillion, the combined volume of asset-backed bonds, CDOs and residential and commercial MBS issued worldwide during the first nine months of this year is just slightly behind the year-ago total of $1.9 trillion. The deficit is expected to grow by yearend though, due in large part to the recent decline in the U.S. asset-backed business.

That means this year's worldwide securitization volume will almost certainly fail to match the $2.7 trillion record set in 2006.

Among underwriters of all types of securitizations worldwide, Citi is the current market leader. It has racked up $135.1 billion of assignments so far this year for a 7.4% market share. At this time in 2006, the bank was in fourth place, at $126.6 billion.

Deutsche and J.P. Morgan are close behind, with just over $134 billion of deals apiece. Fourth-place Lehman, again, maintains a diminished standing - after winning the worldwide bookrunner derby in each of the last two years. Merrill Lynch rounds out the top five.

Lehman and Bear, meanwhile, held onto their usual spots as the dominant underwriters of private-label mortgage bonds in the U.S. Each ran the books on more than $40 billion of such transactions during the first nine months of this year, grabbing a market share of more than 10%.

Those totals, however, trail the banks' September 2006 figures. That's due mainly to a 9% drop in year-over-year issuance across the sector, to $390 billion.

In Europe, the volume of asset-backed securities, CDOs and residential and commercial MBS offerings placed during the first, second and third quarters of 2007 was up 25% from a year earlier, to $405 billion. But $300 billion of that supply was already in the hands of investors at midyear, with business drying up since then.

Barclays climbed from fourth place among structured-finance underwriters in Europe a year ago to capture top honors in that class heading into the fourth quarter of 2007, with $43.5 billion of deals and a 10.7% slice of the market. That pushed September 2006 leader ABN Amro down to second place, followed by Deutsche.

At first glance, the worldwide market for CDOs also appears to be growing, with year-to-date issuance gaining by about 12%, to $362 billion. However, the sector has recently gone into a deep freeze, as investors have rejected a range of deals that may have taken overly optimistic views of their holdings - especially transactions backed by subprime-mortgage bonds.

In the CDO market, Merrill maintains its usual position as the most active underwriter. It's just a hair ahead of Citi though, with Barclays ranking a distant third.

Asset-Backed Alert's various rankings around the world account for publicly offered and privately placed securitizations. They exclude continuously offered products, such as those from commercial-paper conduits, and the swap portions of synthetic issues.