Europe

  • 22 Feb 2012 at 6:29 PM

One Last Greek CDS Post Before It All Goes Poof

By Matt Levine

One of the side benefits of Greece taking whatever somewhat irreversible steps it is now taking is that something will happen to CDS written on existing Greek debt and that will mean that we can stop talking about what will happen to CDS written on existing Greek debt and start talking about more interesting things like quasi-CDS written by the EFSF on shaky Eurozone government debt.

For now, though, we’ve got at least a few more weeks of surprisingly and unsurprisingly ill-informed fretting that triggering the $4bn of Greek CDS will Bring Down The Entire Global Financial System. That seems sort of silly because notionals aren’t that big, mark-to-market collateral is mostly being posted, and at this point the marks are pretty close to what you’ll get from Greece so it doesn’t look like there’s tons of unknown unrecognized losses lurking out there.

On the other hand, we’re mostly through with the speculation that not triggering Greek CDS will Prove That CDS Is Worthless and thereby Bring Down The Entire Global Financial System, so that’s nice. The reason that’s mostly over is that it sure looks like Greek CDS will in fact trigger, as Athens has moved to adopt a collective action clause that will flip the Greek restructuring from “voluntary, heh heh heh” to “involuntary” and thus trigger the ISDA restructuring event definition. You can argue that the mechanics of the cash settlement auction will mildly screw CDS holders but I’m not so sure, and in any case this is pretty solidly in the category of derivatives nerdery rather than Bring Down The etc. Continue reading »

  • 07 Feb 2012 at 3:03 PM
  • Banks

Deutsche Bank Treasures Its Reputation (For Making Economically Questionable Decisions) So Much That It Turned Down Free Money

By Matt Levine

You may have heard that some shit is going down in Europe. This came as some surprise to me since I stopped paying attention to that whole continent when the banks were all fixed in December. What could possibly go wrong? I asked myself loudly, to drown out all the “Greece talks near [success / catastrophe]” I’d otherwise be hearing. Well, for one thing, some of those banks actually refused to be fixed just because they were, and I hope I’m representing their claims accurately here, “not broken”:

“The fact that we have never taken any money from the government has made us, from a reputation point of view, so attractive with so many clients in the world that we would be very reluctant to give that up,” said Josef Ackermann, Deutsche Bank’s chief executive, explaining to analysts last week why the German lender didn’t borrow from the ECB.

Mr. Ackermann said Deutsche Bank still is scarred from its experience borrowing from the Federal Reserve in the first phase of the financial crisis in 2008. U.S. regulators encouraged banks to borrow under the cloak of promised confidentiality, but when the banks’ identities were subsequently disclosed by the Fed, the recipients were dubbed bailout recipients. “We learned a lesson,” Mr. Ackermann said.

It’s a valuable lesson. While once government largesse was free and secret, we’ve recently seen all sorts of strings being attached to bailouts, from minor inconveniences like “if you take our bailout we’ll make you pay off (some of) your debts” to game-changing restrictions like “I don’t want my tax dollars to be used for some sort of pro-gay stunt like this.”* Continue reading »

  • 31 Jan 2012 at 12:29 PM
  • Banks

Volcker Rule Will Be Bad For European Governments, Say European Government Ministers Who Were Told By Banks That The Volcker Rule Would Be Bad For Them

By Matt Levine

I’ve been pretty skeptical of the whole Volcker Rule thing because I don’t really understand the conceptual division between “making bets with your own money” and “market making,” and I’ve been gratified to see that paid financial industry mouthpieces are on the same page. Now it’s nice to see unpaid mouthpieces agreeing too:

Yet finance ministers from around the world lined up to whisper in the ear of Timothy Geithner, the Treasury secretary, who made the rounds in Davos on Thursday and Friday, about a specific element of the Volcker Rule that has them apoplectic: The rule says that United States banks — and possibly certain foreign banks that do business in America — would be restricted in trading foreign government bonds. Yet the rule, conveniently, provides an exemption for United States government securities. Every other country is out of luck.

The measure, critics say, is likely to increase borrowing costs for foreign governments, reduce liquidity and make the market for foreign government bonds more volatile, the opponents charge. In the end, it may fall into the category of unintended consequences of a proposed new regulation.

So, yeah, totes agreed, but for diversity here is a more measured view:

The Volcker rule is, in many ways, a riddle wrapped in a mystery. It is impossible to know what the impact on market liquidity will be. Foreign banks, or non-banks, may step into the fray to pick up the slack… or perhaps the impact of the rule won’t be that big on US banks, anyway. Without a set of final rules, a period of time to watch them in action, and a parallel universe to see what would have happened if they hadn’t been implemented, it’s all speculation.

Again, I come down on the side of robust market-making by banks being a good thing and so I suspect those lined-up-and-whispering finance ministers are right, but it’s also true that that’s just, like, my opinion, man, and nobody really knows what will happen but if I were Citadel I’d be lobbying like crazy for the Volcker Rule and promising European governments that I’d make awesome tight markets in their bonds. Continue reading »

  • 16 Dec 2011 at 2:04 PM

Fitch: You Should Just Give Up Already

By Bess Levin

Fitch Ratings lowered its outlook on France’s triple-A rating to “negative” from “stable,” indicating there is a 50-50 chance the nation could lose its top investment-grade rating over the next two years. The move came as Fitch also placed its ratings on six other euro-zone nations, including Spain and Italy, on watch for downgrade after it concluded a “comprehensive solution” the region’s debt crisis is “technically and politically beyond reach.” [WSJ]

  • 15 Dec 2011 at 3:45 PM

Now That European Banks Have Money, Lots Of People Have Ideas For What They Should Do With It

By Matt Levine

So Europe’s all better now, or something. The banks are anyway. They have had the money flung at them, in the form of the European Central Bank advancing them tons of medium-term funding at attractive rates and with pretty chill collateral requirements, and now they just have to sit back and be awesome.

Since they’re now all flush and awesome, various people have come out of the woodwork to help them spend their money. (I’m happy to help too! Call me!) One possible answer is “bail out your reprobate governments,” which FT Alphaville have dubbed the “Sarko trade” after a guy who said this:

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said the ECB’s increased provision of funds meant governments in countries like Italy and Spain could look to their countries’ banks to buy their bonds. “This means that each state can turn to its banks, which will have liquidity at their disposal,” Sarkozy told reporters at the summit in Brussels.

Alphaville point to a equity research note by Morgan Stanley, who estimate that the size here is maybe less than Sarkozy hoped for but much, much more than zero. You can have various views on the desirability and/or plausibility of this.

Another thing the banks could do is take all these gobs of money and actually go lend it to people to, like, buy Portuguese villas and stuff. This seems very broadly speaking like a good thing for them to do, since banks lending to people and businesses is sort of their job. One guy likes this idea: Continue reading »

  • 14 Nov 2011 at 5:47 PM

This Europe Crap Is Throwing A Wrench In Josef Ackermann’s Plans To Be Out Of The Office Every Day By 5 This Year

By Bess Levin

Deutsche Bank said Monday that the bank’s Chief Executive Josef Ackermann won’t take over as chairman of the supervisory board when he steps down in May, and it is proposing Allianz SE financial chief Paul Achleitner for the position instead. Citing “extremely challenging” conditions on the international financial markets and in the political-regulatory environment,” Mr. Ackermann said he must focus on his tasks as CEO right now, according to a statement from the bank. This means he can’t spend time seeking the support of shareholders for his bid to be supervisory board chairman. Supervisory board candidates need the support of 25% of the shareholders to be elected. A person familiar with the matter told Dow Jones Newswires that Mr. Ackermann didn’t have the time do the necessary lobbying and couldn’t win their backing. Another person familiar with the matter said: “It became obvious that Ackermann couldn’t secure this.” [WSJ]

  • 28 Oct 2011 at 1:43 PM

If You’re Not Into Greek CDS Any More, Maybe You Can Buy This Monstrosity

By Matt Levine

We’ve noted here before the irony that Europe is both (1) screwing with your ability to get paid on CDS on shaky European sovereign debt (sort of) and (2) hoping people will buy more shaky European sovereign debt because they can get tradeable first-loss protection, suspiciously reminiscent of CDS, from the EFSF on those bonds. The further irony is that, at the same time as it’s touting the free transferability and liquidity of that first-loss protection as a selling point, Europe is moving to restrict investors from owning sovereign CDS unless they can prove they really need it, to hedge sovereign debt or correlated assets.

Today FT Alphaville has the details on the potential EFSF-issued first loss protection (full Q&A here). The plan would be to let member states who are “under market pressure” to issue bonds along with “partial protection certificates” that would, on a payment default on the underlying bond, pay off an amount equal to the principal loss on the bond, up to some cap. The EFSF is coy on the cap but admits it might be around 20% of the bond’s principal. The payoff would be in the form of EFSF bonds, which are currently AAA rated: so if your Spanish bonds, say, only pay off 50 cents on the dollar, you’d get an extra 20 cents face value of AAA rated EFSF bonds of unspecified terms.

Importantly, these certificates would be freely tradeable:
Continue reading »