The Irish Economy

A common jibe that journalists and politicians level at academics they disagree with, or perhaps just plain don’t like, is that the academics are disconnected from reality by virtue of their ivory tower employment. In relation to economists, this often takes the form of the tired line about the discipline originally being called “political economy” and academics putting forward proposals that are “good economics” but “bad politics”.

Brendan Keenan’s column in today’s Sunday Independent is a classic example of this genre. Mr. Keenan argues that the various economists associated with this blog (the “dissident economists” formerly known as “opinionated economics lecturers”) are politically naive and their advice unsound. Specifically, Keenan proposes that we would be better off if, contrary to recommendations emanating from this site, the government had paid more to the banks for the NAMA loans and demanded lower capital ratios.

There is such a thing as political economy. Anglo would still have been a nightmare, but a somewhat more generous payment from Nama, and a less stern view on bank capital, would have made the numbers a lot less frightening.

That might have made it easier to get the deal with the trade unions approved, and get another unpleasant Budget through in December. Not only better politics, but possibly better economics than worrying about Tier One capital and Long-Term Economic Value.

I’m not sure that either the politics or the economics of this column are particularly compelling.

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The EU Commission has released the full text of its decision to approve NAMA announced on February 26. Emmet Oliver discusses the statement in today’s Independent. Thanks to Jagdip Singh for the hat tip. What I find frustrating about this process is why we get a minimal “EU approves NAMA” statement in February and a slightly-censored version of the full approval six weeks later. It would be far preferable for the full text to be released at the same time as the announcement of the decision.

Thanks also to Jagdip for getting us more information on the “NAMA total consideration” mystery. As outlined in his comment, Jagdip wrote to NAMA:

Dear Sirs,

I have studied your four publications from Tuesday 30th March 2010 with respect to the transfer of the first tranche of loans to NAMA. I write to ask if you could make publicly available the overall methodology to derive the Long Term Economic Value (LEV), Current Market Value (CMV) and consideration paid with respect to the first tranche of €16bn of gross loans.

In summary the gross loans of the first tranche are estimated at €16.03bn, the LEV is shown as €10.51bn, the CMV as €9.44bn and the consideration paid is €8.51bn. Could you explain in general terms how the LEV and CMV were calculated and why the consideration paid is different to the LEV.

Also the press have widely reported the estimated haircut on the first tranche at 47%. Would it be more accurate to quantify the haircut as 34% (1 - LEV/Loan Value or 1 - 10.51/16.03)?

I have read the Act and the LEV Regulations before writing to you and I can still not resolve the figures produced for the first tranche. I propose publishing any response from NAMA to the above questions on the irisheconomy.ie blog.

Jagdip received a reply (Garbo speaks!):

Thank you for your email.

Please see below a brief guide to how NAMA obtains these calculations:

1. The €16.03bn is the nominal value of the loan balances transferring to NAMA.

2. The property CMV represents the current market value of the property as at 30 November 2009.

3. An LEV uplift factor is applied to the property CMV to arrive at the property LEV which is one of many inputs to the valuation methodology to arrive at the consideration NAMA will pay for any of the transferring loans. In addition to the LEV of the property, the loan valuation is determined by reference the discount rates per the valuation regulations taking account of enforcement costs and the legal due diligence levy, and the potential for legal haircuts regarding defects in security and title amongst other inputs which influences the consideration paid by NAMA for the loans. The average LEV uplifts per participating institution are available on our website.

4. The discount applied can therefore be calculated as: (1- (Consideration paid/Loan balances at transfer)).

Some additional information is available on our website http://www.nama.ie.

As Jagdip notes, “defects in security and title” are likely to be the principal explanation for why the “total consideration paid” for the first tranche was below the “current” (i.e. November 2009) market value of the underlying assets. I think this means that the signed copy of the 46 guy letter is on its way to an anonymous NAMA official, who I’m sure will treasure it.

Between this reply and Brian O’Neill of NAMA’s letter to the Irish Times commenting on Brian Lucey’s criticisms of their ingenious linked-to-Euribor strategy (Brian’s original article here and reply to NAMA here) there is some sign of NAMA becoming a somewhat less secretive organisation. This is a welcome development though I suspect those who ask tough questions may find limits to this transparency.

In an interesting prediction, the Minister for Finance, Brian Lenihan, has said that Irish house prices will now hit bottom thanks to the NAMA transfers. The Sunday Independent reports:

Yesterday, Mr Lenihan told the Sunday Independent: “One of the good things about the steep discount, averaging 47 per cent, is that the residential property market will now be stabilised at a realistic level.”

He added: “You can now buy in confidence that the price is realistic.”

Perhaps I’m being stupid here, but I’m having troubles linking (a) The setting of prices that the government is willing to pay to banks for non-performing property loans (largely backed by commercial or development property) with (b) Prices that people are willing to pay for residential properties.

The Minister reckons the NAMA transfers will act to boost the residential property market. Just playing devil’s advocate, one could point a large surplus of properties for sale, high unemployment, pay cuts, future tax increases, higher mortgage interest margins, and future increases in ECB interest rates as factors that could act against whatever positive effect the NAMA transfers are supposed to have.

I think it is widely agreed that undecapitalised banking systems saddled with bad loans are a threat to the efficient functioning of the economy. I think it’s also widely agreed that, whatever the mechanism, the goal of any banking plan is to return the sector to a healthy well-capitalised condition.

Given that, I find it very disappointing that eighteen months after the Irish banks were thrown into crisis and at least a year since it was clear that losses threatened the solvency of the banks, we are still taking our time getting the banks recapitalised.

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Ok folks, let’s have a competition. According to page 3 of this document, we’re paying €8.5 billion for the first tranche of loans, which are backed by property with a calculated long-term economic value of €10.5 billion. First person to provide full details of how exactly this works gets a copy of the old NAMA protest article signed by all 46 guys. Should be worth a fortune in years to come. Zhou is doing trojan work on this right now and has been installed as odds on favourite by Paddy Power.

The Central Bank and Financial Regulator have released a document outlining their methodology in setting capital requirements for the banks. The banked calls this process its Prudential Capital Assessment Review (PCAR). It is available here.

There were things I liked in today’s announcements and things I disliked. More of the latter than the former. (more…)

Tomorrow we should finally see a resolution of much of the uncertainty that has been hanging over the Irish banking system. We are being told that the estimated prices for NAMA transfers will be announced, as well as the capital requirements set by the Central Bank and the new legal framework for the Central Bank and Financial Regulator.

With the news so soon to be released, there is little point in me speculating as to what is going to happen. What I would flag, however, is that there is something of a disconnect between two sets of statements doing the rounds in today’s media coverage.

First, there has clearly been widespread leaking that the NAMA loan transfers will see some banks taking considerably larger writedowns than had previously been expected. For instance, in the Irish Independent, Emmet Oliver writes that “AIB is set to be hit with a discount of up to 40pc”.

Second, much of the coverage mentions the idea of the state owning 70 percent of AIB and 40 percent of BoI. See, for instance, here and here. And note that Emmet Oliver’s full sentence is “AIB is set to be hit with a discount of up to 40pc, making majority State control all but inevitable” and he mentions the Minister’s “plan to take a 70pc stake in the lender.”

The disconnect is that these two sets of figures don’t seem to add up. There is nothing new about the idea of the state potentially owning 70 percent of AIB. Even based on previous expectations for NAMA discounts, this was always a possibility. For instance, I’m looking now at a Davy stockbrokers report from April of last year that projected a base case of the government owning 78% of AIB.

However, it is hard to reconcile the continuing circulation of the same ownership statistics as before with the new information (if such it is) on discounts and also on capital levels.

To give a concrete example, AIB’s annual report says that it had €9.5 billion in core equity capital at the end of 2009. This included the government’s €3.5 billion in preference shares (this isn’t core equity in my book, or most people’s, and it is likely to be converted to ordinary equity.) So that leaves €6 billion in private core equity capital. AIB is supposed to be transferring €24 billion in loans to NAMA. Forty percent of €24 billion is €9.6 billion.

So, do the math on this and you’d probably come to a different conclusion about ownership percentages than have been flagged by the media. One way or another, we’ll find out tomorrow, but today’s leaks are confusing, perhaps deliberately so.

Update: This post should have been clearer that AIB’s annual report already allows for €4.1 billion in provisions for losses on loans going into NAMA. So the calculations would involve an additional €5.5 billion in losses over and above that. With half a billion in equity capital and the need to get up to a core equity ratio of eight percent, the 70 percent state ownership doesn’t add up. Still, perhaps I’ll see tomorrow how it’s going to add up and still end up with the 70 percent outcome.

Today’s Sunday Times carries an important story from Sarah McInerney and Stephen O’Brien. Many people had been thinking that the market valuations applied to loans being transferred to NAMA would be less than had been assumed a few months ago because property prices are still falling.

However, it turns out that this isn’t necessarily the case. In an answer to a Dail question from Fine Gael TD Deirdre Clune on March 10, Minister Lenihan said the following:

Section 73 of the NAMA Act sets out that NAMA may set a date by reference to which the market value of a bank asset or property is to be determined. NAMA have set this date as 30 November 2009. It follows that any property decreases or increases after 30 November 2009 will not be reflected in the NAMA market valuations.

So, NAMA no longer cares about the current value of the assets it is acquiring. Even though no assets have yet being transferred and the transfers will take place in a drip-drip fashion over the next year or so, NAMA will not bother calculating the actual market valuations for these assets. Instead, NAMA is adopting a Marty McFly approach to asset pricing: Let’s just go back to November 2009, when things weren’t quite as bad as they are now.

This decision raises a number of questions:

1. Who made this decision? The Sunday Times indicates that Minister Lenihan has made this decision. The Minister’s Dail answer suggests that “NAMA have set this date.”  So was this a political decision or one made by a NAMA official? Since the figures for asset transfers are so huge, even relatively modest changes in property prices since November 2009 would result in a reduction of billions in the amount of taxpayer money being used to acquire these loans. When a decision of this magnitude is made, the public deserves to know who made it and to have the rationale explained.
2. When was this decision made and why was it announced in such a low-key fashion that it wasn’t reported in the national media until eleven days later? NAMA’s webpage contains plenty of material. Why wasn’t this decision explained?

As regular readers will know, I have always been sceptical of the NAMA pricing process. We have known from the start of this process that transfer prices close to what these assets are really worth will result in the banks being insolvent and probably being nationalised, an outcome that the government has consistently stated that it does not want. So, even before the details of the bill was released, there were clear signals that the process was unlikely to ever really be about finding the true value of these assets and more likely to be about paying a high enough price to prevent insolvency.

However, the strictures of the European Commission have required a formal approach based on paying market value plus a potential LTEV adjustment. And falling market prices have had the potential to drive the banks into insolvency, even under LTEV pricing.

This appears to be where the November 2009 decision comes in. At one stroke, falling prices in the current market don’t matter. With one leap into the silver DeLorean (an Irish car!) we no longer need to worry about trivialities like what the assets we’re acquiring are actually worth. And sure nobody will notice if we barely tell them.

Finally, I note from the Sunday Independent that part of the reason for the delay in the transfer of assets is that “At least two institutions are said to be digging in their heels on the valuations.”

So here we are, an asset sale with only one buyer, acquiring assets from sellers who are insolvent if the assets are sold for their market value. However, the buyer has committed to paying the sellers more than market value. And rather than being grateful, the sellers are “digging in their heels” on valuations. You couldn’t make it up.

Ronan has updated his analysis on property yields and its implications for NAMA and long-term economic value. It doesn’t make for comfortable reading. I wonder does Ronan understand the mystery of the standard discount rate …