The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times report that Citigroup obtained funding through the end of the year for $80 billion of SIVs (for background, please see here and here). This development is newsworthy, since Citigroup had indicated it faced a crunch in November as commercial paper funding SIVs mature, yet the widely announced SIV rescue plan (the Master Liquidity Enhancement Conduit), was almost certain not to be in place by then. Citi faced the possibility of either taking a large amount of assets onto its balance sheet or unloading some or all of them, and that volume of selling would yield lousy prices and could create widescale distress.
From the Journal:
Executives of Citigroup Inc. say the giant bank has secured funding through year end for the $80 billion in structured investment vehicles it manages after selling $20 billion in assets since the midsummer credit crunch.
The steps taken by the bank’s alternative-asset management unit, run by former Morgan Stanley stock-division chief John Havens, mean the Citigroup SIVs can avoid the kind of forced selling at distressed prices begun by some other European SIV managers, the executives said.
However, the financial press is wondering whether the MLEC plan will ever get off the ground. The New York Times gave a caustic assessment in “Banks’ Plan to Help May Itself Need Help.” The story indicated that many details of the fund’s operations remain unresolved:
Does the rescue plan for the credit markets need to be saved?
The plan is still being developed, but the roughly $75 billion effort to snap up troubled securities is struggling to get off the ground….Citigroup, Bank of America, and JPMorgan Chase back the plan but are just beginning to hammer out the details. Bank regulators are aware of the discussions but some say they are out of the loop. And market participants are puzzled, with investors like Pimco and T. Rowe Price balking at buying in…..
But the plan, which was hatched in August but leaked last week, has been plagued by uncertainties…How will the plan work? Who will participate? How much will its backers put in?
“Until we know the answers, it is tough to say just how much impact this is going to have,” said Christian Stracke, a CreditSights analyst who follows S.I.V.’s. At this point, “It’s a big mess.”
Yesterday, the big banks convened an organizational meeting at Citigroup’s headquarters in Manhattan. Each bank will have about 15 executives take part in various committees. A detailed proposal is expected in about two weeks….
But each bank has something different at stake.
Citigroup, which operates the four largest S.I.V.’s and could be on the hook for $100 billion, has a clear interest. If the fund was able to buy those assets, Citigroup would minimize the impact on its balance sheet. Some suggest that the plan is a Citigroup bailout, which the bank denies….
Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase, on the other hand, do not operate S.I.V.’s but they do run large money market funds that invest in them. Even if their funds were never in jeopardy, any news that could rattle the overall money markets might worry their investors.
The new fund is intended to buy many of the securities owned by the S.I.V.’s, but at a cost. A S.I.V. would pay a fee for the right to sell to the fund, and part of the fee would be passed along to the banks, increasing profits.
The three big banks are still negotiating how much money they would put into the plan. Several Wall Street firms, like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, and European banks, like Barclays and Deutsche Bank, are waiting to see if there is enough incentive to participate.
The banks have also pledged that the new backup fund would not buy risky assets, like subprime mortgage bonds. But the banks are debating the extent to which the fund will be able to purchase other risky securities, like collateralized debt obligations.
Money market fund managers are also divided over participating. Some say the effort will just delay the inevitable by repackaging bonds backed by mortgages, loans and other assets that investors know little about and that have fallen in value.
“This is just taking money from one pocket and putting it another, with admittedly slightly stronger credit backing,” said William H. Gross, the chief investment officer of Pimco, the huge bond manager.
Mr. Gross, whose firm manages about $700 billion in assets but does not hold asset-backed commercial paper issued by S.I.V.’s, said the situation reminded him of Japanese banks that refused to sell or write off troubled loans at distressed prices in the 1990s. Jim McDonald, a T. Rowe Price portfolio manager who holds commercial paper issued by four S.I.V.’s, said his initial reaction was negative. “Our credit analysts have more questions,” he said. “Their take on the whole thing is that the only benefit to this program is that it might give S.I.V.’s a longer time to sell their assets.”
Others like Fidelity Investments and Federated Investors say the plan can be effective. They note that subprime mortgages are a tiny part of most S.I.V.’s and that many of the assets are higher-quality loans…
The backup fund began to take shape in August after the asset-backed commercial paper market seized up…. Watching a crucial funding source dry up caused concern among banks and regulators….
Throughout September and October, the proposal picked up steam as a sort of inexpensive insurance policy against the possibility that a liquidity crisis could recur in the market.
There are two intriguing revelations. First is that, nearly a week after the leak, no progress has been made on the substance of the MLEC. A week is an eternity in deal-land. This to me suggests that there are fundamental obstacles.
I suspect one stumbling block is that structuring the deal is turning out to be a circular problem. To figure out fee structure, you need to know what sort of assets are likely to go into the MLEC (that will determine the cost and nature of the credit support). However, the only one of the organizers that is a serious participant in this market is Citi, and while Citi is a big player, it can’t be assumed to be representative. Hence the organizers probably need the input of other banks to sort out what the range of possibilities of asset composition are.
But those other banks won’t give that information unless they have agreed to participate. But they won’t sign up if they don’t know what the fee structure is (and some firms may care about other details as well). But per above, the organizing group probably can’t firm up the structure without the outside input.
The second is that the MLEC idea was apparently more a contingency plan than a full-on initiative, but in classic Schrodinger’s cat fashion, the act of observation (in this case, the leak) forced it out of an indeterminate state and the organizers decided they wanted it to be alive rather than dead, so they pressed ahead.
A very good post at Accrued Interest tries to work out the MLEC pricing conundrum based on data from Bear Stearns. He assumes that the fund will go down to singe A paper (which contradicts their statements so far, that it will buy only AAA and AA assets) and the same distribution as current SIVs. The latter assumption is not a given, but it is the place to start. He comes up with an average of 12% losses on the assets versus beginning-of-year valuations.
Accrued Interest works through two scenarios: one in which the MLEC buys highly rated instruments, the other in which it acts as a vulture fund. The latter is at odds with every press report to date, so I’ll stick with his observations about the difficulties with the high quality asset program:
The SIVs will benefit because the sale of assets to the MLEC will give them a nice infusion of cash. The losses they incur as part of the sale will be marginally less than had they gone into the market themselves, but in real economic terms, this will be all but offset by the fees paid to create and insure the MLEC. If the assets are all viewed as very high quality, then I suspect MLEC won’t have any trouble getting funding from CP issuers, and every one will hail its creation as a smashing success. However, the whole thing will be nothing other than a tool to obfuscate the balance sheets of SIV sponsors.
Or as one reader put it, rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
But even that view may be optimistic. Selling assets to the MLEC could be seen as an admission of financial problems. That alone would keep other SIV owners away.
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Interesting observation at the end. If I sell a distressed asset at a market price, then I have to mark-to-market all my similar assets. On the other hand, suppose I sell the same asset at a mark-to-make-believe price, but compensate the buyer indirectly through murky indirect fees for creating and insuring the buying entity. If the fees are hefty enough, and maybe a bit transparency-challenged, then the buyer effectively gets the same lower price, but I’ve avoided marking to market. Maybe I post an artificially high “market” price and hope the world buys into it. The logjam clears and good times are here again.
Hey, it’s a dumb theory, but it’s too early in the morning for rational thought, and nobody else seems to be able to figure out the point of the exercise either.
If any of my money market funds invest in the fund I will sell them and buy one that doesn’t. I think many investors feel the same way.
For money market fund managers its the classic proble. 1. I invest in the fund and it is OK and i make a little $. 2. I invest in the fund and it isn’t OK and I get fired.
“Hey, it’s a dumb theory, but it’s too early in the morning for rational thought, and nobody else seems to be able to figure out the point of the exercise either.”
Hahahaha. That was good. :)
Bernard
The more I think about this thing, the less I think I understand.
How does selling the SIVs (ABSs? CDOs?) bring money to Citi when Citi owes short-term debt on whatever it is that they are selling? Doesn’t the debt balance out the sale price?
Also, who is to determine the rating of what they are selling? The same corrupt and/or incompetent people who rated it in the first place? Why should anyone have confidence in that?
Oops, forgot:
Also, if we actually do believe that the M-LEC is only buying the best, what happens to the then-known-to-be toxic sludge left behind?
bob,
The headline and the text chosen may not have made things clear. The funding Citi obtained is for its existing SIVs. If they didn’t get funding, they’d either have to cough up the dough themselves (perhaps by dissolving the SIV and taking the assets onto their balance sheet) or sell assets out of the SIV.
The fear is that it Citi sells, it will exceed demand, leading to distressed prices, which could force various investors and hedge funds to mark down similar paper. Anyone who was using margin loans would face a margin call and might decide to sell rather than put up more margin.
If Citi didn’t sell, the concern was it would tie up balance sheet capacity, so they would be less likely to lend to businesses and consumers.
As for your first comment, yes, that is one of the things from the get-go that has made no sense to me. If you buy the best stuff, what about the rest? You’ve effectively designated it as crappy. Who will fund that?
In essence this is like the home builders offering all kinds of incentives instead of a lower home price.
Yves,
“If you buy the best stuff, what about the rest? You’ve effectively designated it as crappy. Who will fund that?”
That is a very good point.
The MLEC by definition would CAUSE FORCED LIQUIDATION on the $200 billion in SIV assets that they DONT BUY (when the remaining SIV debt matures), because the market would run away from the remaining “tainted” SIV assets.
THE MLEC WOULD DEFEAT ITSELF (by causing the forced liquidation that it aims to avoid in the first place).
Bernard
Yves,
Actually, I didn’t suffer the confusion you thought – your headline was quite clear. All my comments did relate to the M-LEC.
The more I think about it, the more I believe that the M-LEC is mainly a shell came – except that the “pea” is the size of a bowling ball and made of depleted uranium – heavy and toxic.
They are just fighting for some smal delay.
Greenspan delivers sharp warning on superfund
http://www.emergingmarkets.org/article.asp?PositionID=2601&ArticleID=1463222&LS=EMS145798
SIV optimistic Bird’s eye view:
http://www.cairncapital.com/publicdocs/ Guest%20Opinion%20-%20Road%20to%20Recovery.pdf
Citi has a fund full of assets no one trusts the value of, so CP won’t buy into assets. So Citi cooks a scheme where a new fund ‘buys’ the assets which they claim are AAA and AA and CP can be assured of their value. Have I got that right?
My 67 Mustang (doesn’t run) is worth $1k, but if you by it and say it does run, then it’s worth $10K?
Whom are the stupid people here?
I have no idea how this plan will work in practice, but in theory I don’t think it’s such a crazy plan.
As a general group, SIVs are in trouble not because their underlying assets have deteriorated in quality (though some of this has happened) but because they are having trouble rolling over their debt. (Due to investor anxiety and/or insufficient transparency.)
If the super-SIV really does stuff itself with very high quality assets (cross your fingers for no more downgrades), is transparent about this, and backs it up with some liquidity guarantees, then that could get the ABCP rolling again. That is, assuming that investors are avoiding ABCP because of uncertainty about existing SIVS’ asset base rather than a general distrust of all AAA and AA rated assets.
The feeling I get from reading the WSJ is that they’ve pretty much given up lower quality assets for dead.
from 2:55PM …
(… “Due to investor anxiety and/or insufficient transparency”
So why don’t they just address the insufficient transparency problem then? This is the crux of the matter. It’s obviously the least costly, least burdensome route EXCEPT that to do so would expose just how worthless these assets are. These guys are doing all they can to avoid coming clean about just exactly what comprises these assets .. because they stink. The ‘market’ knows this and that’s why it has frozen up.
Until somebody starts the inevitable avalanche of true, accurate, transparent disclosure (and takes the huge $$ hit that entails), nothing will free up this market. Trust has evaporated. It’s a Missouri market now (as in show me)
A salesman at a used car lot paid too much for a trade-in once upon a time. It was a decent car, and had some interested potential buyers, but they had to have their price for that old car. Most of the people kicked the tires, asked how much, and walked away. They finally found a buyer who was willing to pay. The SIVs are a thousand used car lots full of over-priced jalopies. The demand just isn’t there, so then the bankers all get gubbermint cheese. See? Everything works out in the end.
Anon at 8:38PM is totally bang on.
I hear a lot of “talk” about transparency, but nobody is DOING anything about it. This may be Issue #1.
Can anyone possibly say that the last earnings reports of all the investment banks were transparent?
The problem with the financial reporting of all financial institutions is that they never disclose with any meaningful detail what their assets really are. And let’s not even get into the derivatives side of things (that is a real black hole).
This continuing lack of transparency has quite ominous implications for the world financial markets. We could enter into a situation where nobody trusts anybody else, in which case money is neither lent in the credit market, nor invested in the stock market, and the entire system breaks down.
Bernard
Sure sounds like a citi bail out to me. Hey I have a hummer (SUV)instead of (SIV) is that close enough to qualify. Its doing the same thing….I paid more then its worth, it’s costing me more everyday, and I’m willing to pay a fee to dump it before it’s actually worthless
Yves:
Citi secured funding throug year-end for $80 billion of SIVs. This is after they sold $20 billion of assets. Does this mean their “bid-to-cover ratio” was .8? If so, this is a big problem.
Don’t they have $400 billion in SIVs? Is all that funded through year-end? And how is it funded? Did they roll-over the ABCP or use the back-up lines of credit? And at what price did they pay for this funding? Their is an old line on the bond market that “their are no bad bonds, only bad prices.” If you offer enough in yield, you can always get funding. The problem then is the SIV is in a negative carry position (the cost of funding is higher than the yield of its assets) and is losing money everyday.
This proclamation that they have secured funding raises more questions than it answers.
Anon of 10:06 PM,
Good point, and good questions. They led to this post. Feel free to make any comments or corrections.