Six federal agencies, the Federal Reserve Board, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, are seeking comment on a proposed rule, approved by the FDIC on March 30, that would require sponsors of asset-backed securities (ABS) to retain at least 5% of the credit risk of the assets underlying the securities and would not permit sponsors to transfer or hedge that credit risk. The proposal, totaling 376 pages in length, would provide sponsors with various options for meeting the risk-retention requirements of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The options include but are not necessarily limited to: (1) a "vertical" slice of the ABS interests, whereby the sponsor or other entity retains a specified pro rata piece of every class of interests issued in the transaction; (2) a "horizontal" first-loss position, whereby the sponsor or other entity retains a subordinate interest in the issuing entity that bears losses on the assets before any other classes of interests; (3) a "seller's interest" in securitizations structured using a master trust collateralized by revolving assets whereby the sponsor or other entity holds a separate interest that is pari passu with the investors' interest in the pool of receivables (unless and until the occurrence of an early amortization event); or (4) a representative sample, whereby the sponsor retains a representative sample of the assets to be securitized that exposes the sponsor to credit risk that is equivalent to that of the securitized assets. The proposed rules also include disclosure requirements that are an integral part of and specifically tailored to each of the permissible forms of risk retention.