Category: Banking Crisis

A Tough Half Year for AIB

“The six months to June 2010 was a very difficult period for AIB and its customers.”  So begins management’s overview of AIB’s interim results for 2010—and it’s hard to disagree.   Bank watchers were looking for news in three main areas: impairments on non-NAMA bound loans, operating profits, and progress on asset disposals.   Today’s release managed to disappoint on all three. 

Provisions for impairment were €2.3 bl. (including €1.2 bl. for loans “identified for potential transfer to NAMA”).   Operating profit before provisions fell 46 percent from the same period last year, with significant falls in the net interest margin.   And Colm Doherty was not especially forthcoming on how well the disposals of Polish, UK and US assets are going, although his presentation to analysts did give the sense that AIB were being forced into a fire sale in poor market conditions—hardly encouraging. 

Other “news” included the (inevitable) plan to follow BOI in raising the rate on variable-rate mortgages by about half a percentage point, and the (sensible) call to extend the guarantee on both shorter- and longer-term liabilities given the continuing difficult funding environment. 

The interim report is available here.   Colm Doherty’s presentation and Q&A is available here. 

Stress Tests

The results for the stress tests on 91 European banks were released yesterday evening.   A reasonably detailed description of the tests and results is available from the Committee of European Banking Supervisors’ (CEBS) website.   The results for AIB and BOI are available from the Irish Central Bank’s website.   As Michael Hennigan points out, the overall passing score was 84-7, and so the release of the results has not quite made the waves expected.   Both Irish banks passed with a bit to spare despite the relatively high Tier 1 target of 6 percent.   However, the results factored in capital raising plans to the end of the year, and the jury is still out on how much of the €7.4 bl. AIB can achieve without additional government help.  

Some analysis here: Irish Times; Irish Independent; Financial Times.

Mody on Institutional Change

Writing in today’s Irish Times, Ashoka Mody argues for the need to introduce a special resolution regime for banks as well as “fiscal benchmarks and supporting rules, along with a technical voice in the form of “fiscal councils” to evaluate budgetary risks.”

Mr. Mody is assistant director in the European department of the International Monetary Fund and has lead the IMF’s article for team that has visited Ireland in recent years. While Mody’s senior IMF status makes him worth listening to, it’s also worth noting that he has a considerable research record as an economist including this interesting work on the effects of budgetary institutions.

No Frank, NAMA is Not Being Funded by the ECB

On RTE radio this morning (on Today with Pat Kenny with, em, Myles Dungan) Fianna Fail TD Frank Fahey said:

I stand by what I said about NAMA from the very beginning. NAMA is being funded … the bonds are being funded by the European Central Bank.

Now I know that language is a flexible thing and perhaps philosophy graduates could spend all night debating what the meaning of “being funded” is. But, I would suggest that the only reasonable interpretation of this statement is that it implies NAMA are receiving funds from the ECB.

This is not at all true. The ECB has no direct relationship with NAMA at all. NAMA bonds can be used by the banks that have received them as collateral for loans from the ECB but that’s it, that’s the full extent of the ECB’s involvement in relation to NAMA. Furthermore, AIB and BoI executives told the Oireachtas last year that they had no particular plans to use the bonds in this fashion.

The NAMA bonds are fully backed by the Irish government. They are a liability of the Irish state, albeit one entered into at the same time that it acquired some property assets that may or may not yield enough to pay off the bonds.

It is long past time for government politicians to stop misleading the Irish public that NAMA somehow involves the state getting money from the ECB. I would plead with any journalist interviewing Deputy Fahey or any other commentator making this claim in the future to point out to them that it has no grounding in fact.

NAMA Tranche 2 Transferred

Details here. Mysteriously, there are no Anglo loans being transferred yet in this tranche. We’re told “Loans will be acquired from the remaining institution – Anglo Irish Bank – over the coming weeks after all necessary due diligence material has been received and evaluated.” It does seem deeply odd that the bank that NAMA is supposedly having the greatest difficulty processing information from is one that is fully owned by the state. An alternative intepretation offered by Jagdip is that the delay relates to EU State Aid nexus.

The discounts on these loans are higher than the first tranche. I don’t think, however, that I can agree with Brian Woods II that this raises the potential profit for NAMA. The new tranche reflects new information on valuations not available when the business plan was put together, though unlike the first tranche, no valuation estimates have been provided. So, in this case, the lower prices paid likely also reflect a lower long-term economic value. It would, of course. be nice to see NAMA re-issue the business plan after each tranche but it ain’t gonna happen.