The Irish Economy

Dan argues the ECB case for not burning Anglo bondholders in today’s Irish Times. I’ll quote the main argument at length

Apart from Ireland, nobody else in the euro zone has sought to make seniors take their losses so there are no cases to which one can point as evidence. But an immediate neighbour’s experience has been watched very closely. Denmark last year introduced the toughest bank resolution laws in Europe. These laws, which govern the winding-down of bust banks, are more similar to those in the United States than those across the rest of Europe. In the US, senior bank bondholders have traditionally got their just desserts if the institutions they invest in fail.

When two Danish banks failed earlier this year, their seniors were burned. This raised funding costs for the entire Danish banking system.

From the euro zone perspective, the ECB is obliged to consider that if a default precedent were to be set in the senior bond market, then at the very least funding costs for all banks in the zone would rise. The savings for Ireland of a few billion euro would be offset many times over by the generalised increase in funding costs for the already-teetering euro zone banking system.

That there is good reason – in the collective European interest – not to burn seniors does not lessen the injustice of having Irish citizens pay for European bankers’ losses (although the hugely subsidised bailout loan is a partial de facto spreading of the burden).

The point that burning senior bondholders may raise the cost of funding for banks is a fair one. But the relatively lower cost of bank funding obtained from a policy of supporting all senior bondholders is hardly a free lunch. The additional risk that the market would perceive as being attached to bank bondholders would have been transferred away from sovereigns.

Now one could argue that some sovereigns in the Euro area are in a position to take on this kind of risk in order to protect their banking systems. But others clearly are not.

My position on this is that there is no need for the question of burning senior bondholders to be a simple black or white proposition. As I discussed in this paper, the EU could adopt a policy that sees senior bondholders only incur haircuts if equity and subordinated bonds have been wiped out, the bank has been nationalised, and the state has incurred costs of x% of GDP to bring the bank back to solvency.

What x is could be a matter for policy discussions, and could evolve over time. But a policy that set x=5% would mean that the EU is only ruling out bailouts that would place enormous burdens on the state. Indeed, given the state of Euro area public finances, there simply isn’t room for another round of expensive bank bailouts so an approach of this sort may help to reduce the perceived riskiness of much of Europe’s sovereign debt.

This policy could see the remaining Anglo senior bondholders receive severe haircuts without implying a contagion effect for other institutions apart from those the market suspect to be severely insolvent and to which states should probably be reluctant to offer blanket liability guarantees.

But, of course, such a policy would tradeoff state and private sector interests in a balanced way and, as I argue in this paper, M. Trichet’s approach to the question of debt defaults has consistently been characterised by dogma rather than balance.

For the latest update on the government’s position on Anglo debt, I recommend this post from NAMA Wine Lake.

Today’s Sunday Independent appears to provide the answer to the question I posed on Tuesday about the government’s position on Anglo bondholders. Despite Brian Hayes stating firmly on April 2 (go here and click on the April 2nd edition of Saturday View, about 56 minutes in) that the government’s position was that haircuts should apply to Anglo senior bonds, the Independent reports that the Department of Finance has confirmed that Anglo’s senior bondholders will be repaid in full.

This is a good time to point people in the direction of NAMAWineLake’s very useful post from Friday detailing all the outstanding bonds of the Irish banks by maturity. November 2nd promises to be a great day for those international hedge fund investors who chose to buy some of the $1 billion senior unsecured Anglo bond first issued in November 2006.

The Central Bank of Ireland has released an addendum to its Financial Measures Programme report covering loan losses at Anglo and INBS.  It concludes the loan losses estimates that were produced last September are still satisfactory.

What does this mean for the remaining Anglo bondholders (€200 million paid out on last Friday)? The government’s policy on this issue is a little unclear to me at this point. The Irish Times reported in April

the head of financial regulation Matthew Elderfield said losses may be imposed on senior bondholders at Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide Building Society if the cost of the two failed institutions rises above the current €34 billion bill.

This wording also suggests the converse—that without evidence of higher losses than €34 billion, senior bondholders would be repaid in full. However, I doubt if policy on this issue is being set by Mr. Elderfield. In the week after the stress test announcements, government politicians continued to maintain that they wanted to see burden sharing with Anglo and INBS bondholders. For instance, listen to junior minister Brian Hayes discussing the issue here on the April 2nd edition of Saturday View (56 minutes in).

There isn’t really any need to base such a decision on whether the Central Bank announces combined losses of more than €34 billion. An amended version of the Credit Institutions bill could be introduced that allows the Minister to apply haircuts to all bonds issued by banks that required enormous support from the state, and perhaps this is what government politicians have in mind when they say they are still pushing for burden sharing.

Anyway, there has been no official response to this release from the Department of Finance, who have instead preferred to issue press releases on the subdebt buybacks proposed by BoI, EBS and ILP. My guess is that the government is hoping this issue will just fade away but, if asked, they will still claim that Anglo senior debt shouldn’t be paid out on but that they’re still “discussing the issue with their European partners”.

As a purely political matter, I’d guess that if and when Ireland gets a lower rate on its EU loans, that may prove to be the moment that they admit they had to give up on haircuts for Anglo bonds. Investors who bought these bonds at steep discounts over the past year (because so many people assumed the government would not pay out on them) will have obtained a fantastic rate of return.

Oh, and by the way, Anglo Irish Bank released their annual report for 2010 today. Apparently, they lost €17.7 billion. Don’t worry though, it’s manageable.

I am trying to get my head around the Anglo/Irish Nationwide “deposit sales”.   The collective wisdom of this blog might help set things straight.   (Useful reporting by Simon Carswell and Mary Carolan here and here.)

A few initial comments/questions:

First, I think term deposit sale (or selling the deposit book) creates a lot of confusion.   I think it is better to think of what is happening as asset sales, but where part of the price is taking on existing liabilities to depositors.   From the purchaser point of view, another perspective is that it is a purchase of assets that comes with a certain amount of pre-arranged funding (i.e. the deposits). 

Second, there seems to be a view that it is a good thing to retain the deposits in the Irish banking system.  But then there is also a view that Ireland needs to deleverage – essentially sell assets to reduce outstanding liabilities.   The ECB wants this to happen because it is afraid it will be further called on as lender of last resort if those deposits later flee.   What are your thoughts on selling the assets to (and retaining the deposits with) other Irish banks? 

Third, in terms of the total being exchanged for the deposits (mainly NAMA bonds and cash), what is the inference about how the bonds are being valued?   I’m sure someone has done these calculations.    Are the implied valuations related to the fact that the asset sales have been made to other Irish banks — one 92.8 percent State owned, the other privately owned?  

A busy day for our grossly insolvent banks. Anglo has issued a trading update. In addition, the Minister for Finance has obtained direction orders from the High Court for Anglo and INBS to allow for deposits to be transferred and to enable other aspects of the restructuring plans. Nearly identical statements from Department of Finance and NTMA (with an FAQ here.)

There have been some comments on this blog this morning on the popular subject of bank bonds.

Let me point out some facts and then some questions for debate.

The facts:  On Monday, January 31^st, Anglo Irish Bank are going to pay out on a maturing bond worth €750 million. (For reference, the total cut in this year’s welfare budget will be €873 million.) The investors who purchased this bond invested their money with Anglo on the 17^th of January 2006. The bond is senior unsecured debt and is not covered by a state guarantee.

The questions: Should the government have passed legislation this month to allow the Minister for Finance to intervene so that the bank did not pay this bond back? And if so, should the next government pass such a bill in relation to the remaining €4 billion or so in outstanding unguaranteed bonds owed by Anglo and INBS?

In answering the question, it’s worth noting that the logic of the section of the recent Credit Institutions (Stabilisation) Bill relating to subordinated debt suggests that a government can change the terms and conditions of bonds to apply haircuts if the bank owes its continued existence to significant amounts of public money being injected.

It is unclear whether this power can simply be extended to senior bonds but it seems to me that it can. Another issue is whether such changes in terms and conditions can legally work to allow a bank to distinguish between different types of unsecured creditors that start out with equal claims, by haircutting bond holders but not deposits. Mechanically, of course, one could achieve the same outcome by haircutting both senior bonds and depositors and then compensating depositors via a separate piece of legislation, but this would be more complicated.

The other issue is the implications of a default on a senior bond for the Irish and European banking sectors. My belief is that how this plays depends on what investors believe is the precedent being set. If the precedent is that investors can lose out if they place their money with banks with flawed business models, who engaged in shady business practices and then become grossly insolvent—then surely this is a precedent that must form part of new proposals for dealing with failed institutions?

On the other hand, one could argue that at such a sensitive time for the Irish banking sector, defaults of this type would send the wrong message and worsen an already extremely serious liquidity problem. This is the argument put forward by our new best friend, Mr. Bini-Smaghi.

I’m open to considering all sides of this argument. On balance, however, I’m inclined to the position that it is in the interests of both Irish citizens and those in the wider EU to set a precedent with the Anglo and INBS bonds that there need to be limits on how much support European taxpayers will provide to insolvent banks.

Anglo Irish Bank have announced buyback offers for their subordinated bonds. The holders of the €1.5 billion in dated subordinated notes have been offered 20c on the euro, so this will cost the bank €300 million. The holders of the undated perpetual preferred securities (about €700 million outstanding according to page 56 of Anglo’s interim report) are being offered 5c on the euro, at a cost of about €35 million.

It appears that those signing up for the offers also have to vote to give the bank “the right to redeem all, but not some only, of the Existing Notes of each Series at an amount equal to €0.01 per €1,000.” In other words, if a majority of the bondholders acccept the deals on offer, then those who don’t accept will get essentially nothing.

It is disappointing that there has been no statement explaining this decision on the Department of Finance website. With €335 million of taxpayer funds being offered, the public should get a full explanation of why this is money well spent.

Brian Lucey writes on the bondholder bailout and other matters in today’s Irish Times: article here.