Category: Banking Crisis

Exposures of Foreign Banks to Euro Periphery

The same BIS Quarterly Review also carries an analysis of the holdings of foreign banks (with a geographical breakdown) in the troubled periphery of the euro area and shows the allocation between claims on the public sector, banks and the non-bank private sector: you can read it here.

As has been pointed out repeatedly on this blog, the claims on Ireland have to be treated with some caution in view of the role played by IFSC-located entities. In its coverage of this new article, the New York Times highlights the probable role of Hypo Real Estate’s subsidiary in Dublin (the former Depfa bank) in contributing to the high claims of Germany on the Irish non-public sector.

Debt Reduction After Crises

The new issue of the BIS Quarterly Review carries some interesting empirical work on debt reduction after crises.  The paper is here and the summary is:

Financial crises tend to be followed by a protracted period of debt reduction in the nonfinancial private sector. We find that a period of debt reduction followed 17 out of 20 systemic banking crises that were preceded by surges in credit. Debt/GDP ratios fell by an average of 38 percentage points, returning to approximately the levels seen before the increase. If history is any guide, we should expect to see a much more significant reduction in private sector debt, particularly of households, than has so far taken place after the recent crisis. The costs of this process in forgone output are difficult to pin down, but there are reasons to believe that they need not be high provided that the banking sector problems that led to the crisis are fixed.

Lucey on Anglo Loss Sharing

Brian Lucey makes the case for senior bond holders to bear a share of the Anglo losses post-September.   You can access his Irish Times opinion piece here.

Lex on Nama

The FT’s Lex column gives its pithy assessment of Nama.

A flavour:

Nama is an odd creature: part debt collection agency, part property developer. As well as toxic loans, it may end up with a portfolio of property which was collateral for the banks’ lending binge. It was meant to fix the broken banks, convince taxpayers they might be repaid and reassure the markets the banks’ liabilities would be met in full. Facing in three directions, it has not appeared convincing in any: slow, bureaucratic, initially indecisive, almost excessively transparent (every toxic loan is assessed individually).

It concludes a bit more hopefully.

Mortgage Arrears: June 2010

The apparently newly branded Central Bank of Ireland has released the latest summary data on mortgage arrears here.  

A total of 36,438 mortgage accounts were in arrears over 90 days in June 2010, up from 32,321 in March. This meant that 4.6 percent of mortgages were in arrears, up from 4.1 percent in March and 3.3 percent in September 2009.  However, mortgages in arrears have a higher average balance (€190,000 compared to an average of €149,000 for the full sample) so the 4.6 percent of mortgages in arrears accounted for 5.9 percent of the total outstanding mortgage balance.

The arrears on the overdue loans totalled €559 million in June. Those in arrears over 180 days are, on average, behind on 10 percent of their total balance.