Noah Feldman, Columnist

All Is Not Lost for Fannie and Freddie Shareholders

Yes, the Supreme Court dealt a devastating blow to investors, but it also gave them a chance to reargue their case against the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

June 23, 2021 at 4:04 PM UTC

By Noah Feldman

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

There’s still hope for investors.
Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

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The Supreme Court almost put an end to the extended litigation about the takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by a conservator — but it didn’t destroy shareholders’ hopes altogether.

In an opinion that was nearly unanimous, the justices definitively rejected the companies’ shareholders’ claim that the Federal Housing Finance Agency had gone beyond its powers as conservator when it agreed to a Treasury Department takeover of the federally backed home mortgage companies and conducted the “net worth sweep” that transferred the companies’ assets to Treasury in 2012.