Author: Karl Whelan

Germans Restrict CDS and Short Selling

Coming hot on the heels of the EU’s restriction on hedge funds because of the role they played in the financial crisis (though this role was in fact pretty minimal) comes the latest European attempt to deal with nasty financial market participants. The German government has released the following statement, translation thanks to the FT’s Alphaville column:

The Federal Financial Supervisory Authority has on Tuesday temporarily banned naked short sales of debt securities issued by eurozone countries for trading on domestic stock exchanges in the regulated market. It has also temporarily banned so-called credit default swaps (CDS) where the reference bond and liability are from a eurozone country, and which does not serve to hedge against default risk (naked CDS).

In addition, BaFin has banned naked short sales in the following financial sector companies: 

AAREAL BANK AG

ALLIANZ SE

COMMERZBANK AG

DEUTSCHE BANK AG

DEUTSCHE BÖRSE AG

DEUTSCHE POSTBANK AG

GENERALI Deutschland HOLDING AG

HANNOVER RÜCKVERSICHERUNG AG

MLP AG

MÜNCHENER RÜCKVERSICHERUNGS-GESELLSCHAFT AG

These bans apply from 19 May 2010, 00:00, until 31 March 2011, 24:00, and will be reviewed.

BaFin justifies these steps given extraordinary volatility in debt securities issued by eurozone countries. Furthermore, credit default swaps on the credit default risk of several countries in the eurozone has increased significantly. Against this background, massive short sales of the affected debt securities and the conclusion of naked credit default risk on eurozone countries had led to excessive price shifts, which could have led to significant disadvantages for financial markets and have threatened the stability of the entire financial system.

Faced with these circumstances, BaFin has also banned naked short sales within the selected financial institutions.

The FT notes that “BaFin had previously introduced a ‘transparency system for net short selling positions‘, and found ‘no evidence of massive speculation against Greek bonds‘ in the CDS market.”

Let’s be clear about this. Short sellers are not the cause of the European sovereign debt crisis anymore than they were the cause of the Irish banking crisis.

As an aside, it’s worth noting that this announcement appears to have triggered a pretty serious downward run on the euro. Now I happen to think that this is a good thing in our current economic circumstances but perhaps the “ve must protect ze currency” crowd might remember that much of the demand for the currency comes from people who use it to purchase financial assets. If you keep mucking around with the rules of the games for financial assets denominated in euro, eventually investors pack it in and your currency loses value.

This shouldn’t be too complicated a point to understand. For example, I teach my undergraduates about how a currency’s value depends on the supply and demand for the assets denominated in that currency.

Anglo: Please, No More Sub-Debt Buybacks

Anglo Chairman-designate Alan Dukes appeared on This Week on RTE Radio 1 yesterday. One aspect of the interview that worried me was Mr. Dukes’s comments on subordinated debt.

Continue reading “Anglo: Please, No More Sub-Debt Buybacks”

EU Set to Regulate Hedge Funds

I’ve written before about being in favour of a common EU-wide approach to financial regulation and crisis management. So, on the face of it, one might imagine that I’d be happy about the news that EU finance ministers are about to approve a proposal for EU-level regulation for Alternative Investment Fund Managers (AIFMs) including hedge funds and private equity firms. However, looking at the proposals, I’m not too positive about them.

I’m all in favour of registering these firms and collecting statistical information on the exposure that banks have to them. But EU the proposals seem to go well beyond this, including bans on selling to retail investors, limits on selling non-EU-domiciled funds inside the EU, the enforcement of capital requirements etc. I’m not sure that these proposals will ultimately do much other than encourage funds to set up outside the EU, for instance in Switzerland.

The documents associated with the proposal admit at various points that hedge funds did not cause the financial crisis. But other material says stuff like “the crisis has underlined the extent to which AIFM are vulnerable to a wide range of risks.” There seems to be an element here of trying to have it both ways. There is most likely also an element of being seen to do something by picking on an area that, as the BBC news story puts it “many say played a part in the global financial collapse” – even if what many say isn’t particularly accurate.

Residential Property Investor Report

Here‘s an interesting report on the Irish residential property market prepared by Karl Deeter’s Irish Mortgage Brokers in association with PropertyWeek.ie & Frank Quinn (Senior College Dun Laoghaire). Its conclusion: “residential investment property is overvalued currently by an average of 37% in Dublin, 43% in Cork, and 39% in Galway.”

State Gets 18% of AIB

AIB have released an interim management statement. As expected, the bank has not been able to pay the state its cash dividend of €280 million, so they are issuing shares for this amount instead. The NAMA bonds are referred to “enhancing our contingent liquidity resources.”

As an aside—and sorry to bring up Frank Fahey twice in two days—I’d note when I appeared on the radio with Deputy Fahey in February, he told listeners that the government would definitely be getting its cash dividend from AIB in May. I noted at the time that the coupon stopper was in place “to prevent the reduction of own funds by financial institutions which are still reliant on State aid to fulfil regulatory capital requirements” and so this was highly unlikely. To my mind, the fact that government politicians are sent out to continuously over-promise in relation to their banking strategy ultimately ends up just undermining their credibility.

Update: I just noticed that the Department of Finance press release contains the following:

The Minister explained:

“The €280 million in ordinary shares issued to the Fund will count towards the additional €7.4 billion equity capital requirement determined by the Financial Regulator so that AIB will meet the new base case capital standards.”

I’m not sure I understand this. The state is not putting any extra funds in, just receiving shares that dilute the existing ownership. Can the issuance of these pieces of paper in exchange for no money really raise regulatory capital? If this trick works, why can’t the bank’s ownership just issue a few million more shares to themselves for free? Then reaching the €7.4 billion target will be no bother.