By Richard Smith, a recovering capital markets IT specialist Housing Wire’s Paul Jackson has another post up continuing his row with Yves over securitization chain of title issues. It presents itself as a rebuttal of her previous post, about an Alabama trial court decision that Jackson deems to be a significant defeat, but which Yves […]
Read more...I’m not easily shocked these days, but I have to confess I gasped out loud when I read that the former managing director of McKinsey, and until recently board member of Goldman and Procter & Gamble, Rajat Gupta, had been charged by the SEC for insider trading. Why would someone with one of the most blue chip reputations in Corporate America, who has clearly done very well financially, risk it all to make a bit more? Not only is the downside considerable, but it also isn’t as if these moves would have made a meaningful difference in his lifestyle. He already had status others would kill for. And passing profitable tips to Raj Rajaratnam was never going to be a ticket to Hedgistan levels of wealth.
But the next interesting bit was to watch the reaction in terms of what this scandal meant for McKinsey. This event was a Rorschach tests on the firm, often with a bit of schadenfreude at another elite name being shown to have feet of clay. And even though I worked for McKinsey over 20 years ago and think the firm has a lot to answer for, some of the charges are a bit barmy.
So let’s dispatch with the uninformed inflammatory stuff first and get to the real dirt.
Read more...Is the old Gillian Tett back? The one-time Financial Times capital market editor has taken to writing less frequently (understandable now that she has head the US operation) and less intrepidly (much of her commentary was prescient, particularly on my pet topic, collateralized debt obligations).
But her latest piece sounds a wee warning, and it’s one we’ve commented on as well, namely, that central banks are vulnerable to losses, and just like the banks they mind, may need a rescue by taxpayers if the err badly enough.
Her object lesson is the Swiss National Bank. Unlike most central banks, the SNB is quite transparent, and publishes periodic statements of the value of its assets on a mark to market basis. The usually conservative SNB made a uncharacteristically aggressive move last year, intervening in currency markets in an effort to suppress the value of its levitating franc.
Even though the locals applauded the move, the central bank was outgunned by currency traders and threw in the towel mid year. As the swissie continued to rise, the bank showed losses at the end of 2010 of SFr 21 billion. The only saving grace was that the gains on the bank’s hefty gold positions exceeded the damage. But that does not reassure its shareholders, who have become accustomed to annual payments out of bank “profits”, and are concerned that the profits this year will be too meager for them to enjoy their customary level of income.
Read more...Not a bad couple of week’s work for the banks, since the “Project Merlin” publicity? Actually it’s taken a bit longer than that, and reconstruction of some of the behind-the-scenes action might be instructive. Although other banks get walk-on parts, the story is mostly about Barclays. Let’s start the timeline in September 2010, when John […]
Read more...Soon-to-be-unemployed sports team managers the world over know what it means when they receive an affirmation of full confidence from the club chairman. Accordingly, we know roughly what to make of this: ‘The Bank of England has credibility,’ said Osborne (pictured). ‘I have complete confidence in it.’ The chancellor will not alter the 2% inflation […]
Read more...Here’s Bob, on the 12th of January, thumbing his nose at the Treasury Select Committee: The new boss of Barclays refused to bow to demands by the MPs that he waives his 2010 bonus, which could be as much as £8m. He said he had forgone his bonus in 2008 and 2009 and would decide […]
Read more...By Satyajit Das, the author of “Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives.” Cross posted from Wilmott
A question of values …
Derivative contracts are valued on a mark-to-market (“MtM”) basis. This requires valuation of the contracts based on the current market price.
OTC derivatives trade privately. Market prices for specific transactions are not directly available. This means current valuations rely on pricing models.
There are significant differences in the complexity of the models and the ability to verify and calibrate inputs. More complex products used sophisticated financial models, often derived from science or statistical methodology. There are frequently differences in choice, exact factorisation and even numerical implementation of the models. Different dealers may use different models.
Some required inputs for the models are available from markets sources. The nature of the OTC market and the limited trading in certain instruments mean that key input parameters must frequently be “estimated” or “bootstrapped” from available data. In certain products, the limited number of active dealers means that “market” prices are sometimes no more than the dealer’s own quote being fed back after being collated and “scrubbed” by an external data provider. This is referred to prosaically as “mark-to-myself”.
Read more...Bob Diamond, Barclays’ chief executive officer, no more said something as inflammatory as “drop dead” to the UK Treasury select committee yesterday than Gerald Ford did in a 1975 speech refusing to extend financial assistance to save New York City from bankruptcy. But the substance was every bit as uncooperative.
Despite its artful packaging, Diamond’s presentation was yet another reminder of the banking industry’s continued extortion game, namely, that they can take outsized, leveraged risks and when they work out, pay themselves handsome rewards, and when they don’t, dump them on the taxpayer. And they’ve only been encouraged to up the ante. Not only did they get to keep their winnings from their last “wreck the economy” exercise, no senior executive was fired, no boards were replaced, and UBS was the only major bank required to give a detailed account of how its screwed up so badly as to need government support. And before you tell me Barclays was never bailed out, tell me exactly how well it would have fared had any other major UK or international bank failed, or had the officialdom not provided extraordinary liquidity support when interbank funding dried up.
Read more...By Richard Smith
Readers of ECONned will be very familiar with the name of Gary Gorton, author of ‘Slapped in The Face by the Invisible Hand’, which explores the relation of the so-called shadow banking system to the financial crisis. His work is pretty fundamental to understanding some of the mechanisms which made the crisis so acute. Now he’s done an interview, which I would like to have a growl at.
It also happens that JP Morgan, originators of those not unmixed blessings, Value-At-Risk and Credit Default Swaps, are also thinking hard about how to get rehypothecation going in the grand style. They know a volume business with a cheap government backstop when they see one; they are on a marketing push, and presumably they have the systems and processes that go with it. That would be a Doomsday Machine…
Read more...By Richard Smith Dublin, by way of the proudly-named International Financial Services Centre, a sparkling new development in the old docks, is “home to more than half of the world’s top 50 financial institutions”. But as the Irish financial crisis wears on, this glitter invites unpleasing comparisons: it simply looks meretricious. What Dublin and, let’s […]
Read more...Tucked away in the EC’s press release on aid for Irish banks, we find this little gem: Anglo Irish Bank will furthermore receive a guarantee covering certain off-balance sheet liabilities (derivatives, clearing transactions and transactional arrangements) that will ensure that Anglo Irish Bank can continue its daily activities as a going concern. There’s nothing here […]
Read more...By Richard Smith The latest Bank of England Financial Stability Report is worth decoding. My last post on the UK sketched a scenario in which the very large 2011 funding programme for UK banks, discussed in the June BoE FSR (back issues all available here), could be quite problematic, in adverse markets. I hinted that […]
Read more...Good to see Moody’s rebuilding its franchise. Their aura of mystery is still reassuringly intact, two years after the subprime CDO ratings fiasco; as a bemused Firedoglake notes, in connection with two diametrically opposed, and politically charged, opinions about the tax cuts and their projected effect on the US credit rating: Can someone tell me […]
Read more...A very good op ed by Thomas Hoenig in the New York Times, “Too Big to Succeed” provides a solid recap of why the business of reining in the too big too fail banks is crucial. It isn’t simply that this is yet another version of “Mission Accomplished”; the bailouts actually made industry concentration worse, […]
Read more...…turns out to be Trichet, this week, anyway; the bond markets are soothed. Two key comments: We have got a monetary federation. We need quasi-budget federation as well. a statement which ought to have all the Eurosceptics, and many others, chorussing “told ya”; then Mr Trichet also hinted that the ECB could extend its purchase […]
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