Archive for August, 2008

August 29, 2008

Friday, August 29th, 2008

The Bank of China has cut its GSE holdings by 25%, according to a Financial Times piece passed on by Naked Capitalism:

The sale by China’s fourth largest commercial bank, which reduced its holdings of so-called agency debt by $4.6bn, is a sign of nervousness among foreign buyers of Fannie and Freddie’s bonds and guaranteed securities.

However, MBS spreads have narrowed over the past month:

The difference between yields on Fannie Mae’s current-coupon 30-year fixed-rate bonds and 10-year government notes narrowed 10 basis points this week to 197 basis points, data compiled by Bloomberg show, reducing the cost of new home loans. The spread fell from 215 basis points on Aug. 18, the widest since March, when the gap set a 22-year high of 238 basis points.

The MCDX index (of credit default swaps on US Munis; briefly mentioned May 23; aspersions were cast May 7) is being circled by vultures. Accrued Interest suggests a spread trade against corporates, but:

I think at some point, arbitragers will put this trade on, and it will expose a lack of deep liquidity in the contract. Talking to various traders, it looks like much of the trading in the MCDX has been macro hedgers, not betting on munis in particular, but using municipals as a means of hedging against a disaster event.

I’m not entirely convinced of the goodness of this hedge. Sure, there’s a positive carry. But there’s a big size-mismatch, which can be thought of as an enormous – infinite, actually, until you actually put some capital into the deal – duration mismatch. And I must say, I’m rather surprised that Accrued Interest did not pass on, or take a stab at estimating, the basis for this trade (which is to say, the spread vs. cash bonds). In the corporate arena, the basis is negative as often as not; with all the auction rate failures I would not be in the least bit surprised to learn that the basis is bigger … but I won’t go too far out on that limb, because Munis are easier to margin (I think; based simply on their risk-weight for banks).

Anyway, why would I want to sell protection? Why wouldn’t I just buy cash bonds?

If I were a betting man, I’d bet that Accrued Interest has such a great long weekend planned that he listened, first idly, then more seriously to one of the salesmen cowboys and wrote the post to help organize his thoughts. I note that according to Bloomberg, 5-year Munis yield 2.87%, while 5-Year AAA Banking & Finance paper yields 4.91%. AI states that the MCDX contract trades at 86.25bp and CDX IG [Corporate Investment Grade] at 144bp. Hmm… I’m going to have to think about this over the weekend myself, and try to figure out what the tax effects are doing!

It is perhaps not coincidental that this opinion was published on the same day that Jefferson County managed to stave off default for another month.

And another US bank went bust:

Integrity Bank, with $1.1 billion in assets and $974 million in deposits, was shuttered by the Georgia Department of Banking and Finance and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Regions Financial Corp., Alabama’s biggest bank, will assume all deposits from Integrity, which was run by Integrity Bancshares Inc. The failed bank’s five offices will open on Sept. 2 as branches of Regions, the FDIC said.

Regions will buy about $34.4 million in assets and will pay the FDIC a premium of 1.01 percent to assume the failed bank’s deposits, the FDIC said. The FDIC estimates the cost of the Integrity failure to its deposit-insurance fund will be $250 million to $300 million.

And that’s another month done! Twenty trading days and PerpetualDiscounts were down on only four of them, returning a total of +3.91%. The total return index is now back to just below where it was on June 26 … but is still 4.90% below its May 30 level, which puts things in perspective a bit.

The weighted average pre-tax bid-YTW is 6.11%, equivalent to 8.55% interest at the standard 1.4x equivalency factor. Long Corporates were down on the month, with significant widening against Canadas; they now yield about 6.20%, so the pre-tax interest equivalent spread is now 235bp … still pretty wide!

The fund did quite well on the month. I have a back of an envelope calculation indicating that the portfolio’s gross return (before fees and expenses) was comfortably in excess of 5.50%, so I’m pretty happy about that. Turnover was a little in excess of 100% – take that, passive advocates! Commissions are significant, but market impact and spread costs can be … negative.

Note that these indices are experimental; the absolute and relative daily values are expected to change in the final version. In this version, index values are based at 1,000.0 on 2006-6-30
Index Mean Current Yield (at bid) Mean YTW Mean Average Trading Value Mean Mod Dur (YTW) Issues Day’s Perf. Index Value
Ratchet N/A N/A N/A N/A 0 N/A N/A
Fixed-Floater 4.60% 4.38% 57,812 16.40 7 -0.0346% 1,113.5
Floater 4.05% 4.09% 42.354 17.16 3 -0.3538% 911.6
Op. Retract 4.97% 3.92% 109,916 2.80 17 -0.0238% 1,054.4
Split-Share 5.35% 5.85% 54,962 4.36 14 -0.0009% 1,042.9
Interest Bearing 6.25% 6.62% 46,848 5.26 2 0.0510% 1,129.8
Perpetual-Premium 6.16% 5.41% 63,809 2.25 1 0.0000% 1,007.3
Perpetual-Discount 6.05% 6.11% 192,930 13.75 70 +0.3506% 881.0
Major Price Changes
Issue Index Change Notes
BAM.PR.B Floater -1.0764%  
ELF.PR.F PerpetualDiscount -1.0357% Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 7.06% based on a bid of 19.11 and a limitMaturity.
RY.PR.B PerpetualDiscount +1.0309% Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 6.05% based on a bid of 19.60 and a limitMaturity.
CM.PR.G PerpetualDiscount +1.0706% Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 6.60% based on a bid of 20.77 and a limitMaturity.
PWF.PR.E PerpetualDiscount +2.0399% Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 5.87% based on a bid of 23.51 and a limitMaturity.
POW.PR.D PerpetualDiscount +2.0833% Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 6.03% based on a bid of 21.07 and a limitMaturity.
BAM.PR.M PerpetualDiscount +2.3200% Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 7.05% based on a bid of 17.20 and a limitMaturity.
SLF.PR.E PerpetualDiscount +2.9573% Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 5.99% based on a bid of 18.80 and a limitMaturity.
Volume Highlights
Issue Index Volume Notes
BMO.PR.J PerpetualDiscount 106,267 Nesbitt crossed 100,000 at 18.80. Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 6.03% based on a bid of 18.81 and a limitMaturity.
BAM.PR.O OpRet 31,526 Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 7.42% based on a bid of 22.85 and optionCertainty 2013-6-30. Compare with BAM.PR.H (5.90% to 2012-3-30), BAM.PR.I (5.44% to 2013-12-30) and BAM.PR.J (6.27% to 2018-3-30). Nice yield … nice volume. Could it be that the underwriters have finally found a clearing price for this issue?
RY.PR.G PerpetualDiscount 31,120 Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 6.05% based on a bid of 18.77 and a limitMaturity.
TD.PR.R PerpetualDiscount 27,446 Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 5.72% based on a bid of 24.75 and a limitMaturity.
RY.PR.C PerpetualDiscount 27,000 Anonymous bought 10,000 from Nesbitt at 19.20. Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 6.04% based on a bid of 19.20 and a limitMaturity.

There were twenty other index-included $25-pv-equivalent issues trading over 10,000 shares today.

ES.PR.B: Small Call for Redemption

Friday, August 29th, 2008

Energy Split Corp. has announced:

that it has called 24,300 Preferred Shares for cash redemption on September 16, 2008 (in accordance with the Company’s Articles) representing approximately 1.110% of the outstanding Preferred Shares as a result of the special annual retraction of 253,600 Capital Shares by the holders thereof. The Preferred Shares shall be redeemed on a pro rata basis, so that each holder of Preferred Shares of record on September 15, 2008 will have approximately 1.110% of their Preferred Shares redeemed. The redemption price for the Preferred Shares will be $21.00 per share.

Holders of Preferred Shares that are on record for dividends but have been called for redemption will be entitled to receive dividends thereon which have been declared but remain unpaid up to but not including September 16, 2008.

Payment of the amount due to holders of Preferred Shares will be made by the Company on September 16, 2008. From and after September 16, 2008 the holders of Preferred Shares that have been called for redemption will not be entitled to dividends or to exercise any right in respect of such shares except to receive the amount due on redemption.

ES.PR.B was last mentioned on PrefBlog in connection with DBRS’s downgrade to Pfd-3(high) at this time last year, when asset coverage was 1.52:1. Asset coverage is 1.92:1 as of August 28 according to Scotia.

ES.PR.B is not tracked by HIMIPref™.

Bank Constraints: 3Q08

Friday, August 29th, 2008

This updates a review of Canadian bank constraints for 2Q08.

Big-6 Bank Constraint Summary
3Q08
  Note RY BNS BMO TD CM NA
Equity Capital A 17,892 16,310 13,609 13,563 8,695 3,930
Tier 1 Cap B 24,150 22,075 18,047 17,491 11,626 5,534
Tier 2 Cap C 5,578 3,969 4,353 7,211 5,461 2,196
Total
Capital
D 29,728 26,044 22,400 24,702 17,087 7,730
Tier 1 Ratio E 9.5% 9.8% 9.9% 9.5% 9.8% 10.0%
Total Ratio F 11.7% 11.5% 12.3% 13.4% 14.4% 13.9%
Assets to
Capital
Multiple
G 19.4 17.8 15.9 17.9 17.7 15.7
RWA to
T1R = 7%
H +36% +40% +41% +36% +40% +43%
RWA to
TotR = 10%
I +17% +15% +23% +34% +44% +39%
Assets to
ACM = 20
J +3% +12% +26% +12% +13% +27%
Assets to
ACM = 23
K +19% +29% +45% +28% +30% +46%
A : See Bank Capitalization Summary : 3Q08
B, C, D, E, F: From Supplementary Packages

G: See source notes from Note A reference; some are my estimates
H: Percentage increase in Risk Weighted Assets that results in a Tier 1 Ratio of 7% [OSFI’s “Well Capitalized” benchmark]; = (E / 0.07 – 1) %
I: Percentage Increase in Risk Weighted Assets that results in a Total Capital Ratio of 10% [OSFI’s “Well Capitalized” Benchmark]; = (F / 0.10 -1) %
J: Percentage Increase in Assets that results in an Assets-to-Capital Multiple of 20x; = ((20 / G) – 1) %
K: Percentage Increase in Assets that results in an Assets-to-Capital Multiple of 23x; = ((23 / G) – 1) %
The limiting constraint is bolded.

In determining the limiting factor, it has been assumed that 23x is the actual limit for the Assets to Capital multiple; OSFI has stated that 23x is OK as long as they meet certain conditions and otherwise apply for permission. Given that OSFI maintains a veil of secrecy over the issue, it has been assumed that the 20x multiple is simply stated for decorative purposes.

It should also be noted that the calculation of the ACM has been recently revised by OSFI, with what I must say is rather weak justification.

Bank Capitalization Summary: 3Q08

Friday, August 29th, 2008

The Big-Six banks have now all released their 2Q08 financials. The results may now be summarized, with the links pointing to the PrefBlog posts reporting on the quarterly reports:

Big-6 Capitalization Summary
3Q08
  Note RY BNS BMO TD CM NA
Equity Capital A 17,892 16,310 13,609 13,563 8,695 3,930
Preferreds Outstanding B 2,552 2,560 1,996 2,175 2,931 774
Issuance Capacity C 1,400 1,671 1,386 1,877 790 78
Equity / Risk Weighted Assets D 7.04% 7.22% 7.47% 7.34% 7.33% 7.07%
Tier 1 Ratio E 9.5% 9.8% 9.9% 9.5% 9.8% 10.0%
Total Capital Ratio F 11.7% 11.5% 12.3% 13.4% 14.4% 13.9%
Assets to Capital Multiple G 19.4x 17.8x 15.9x 17.9x 17.7x 15.7x
A is a measure of the size of the bank
B is … um … how many preferreds. Are outstanding
C is how many more (million CAD) they could issue if they so chose
D is a measure of the safety of the preferreds – the first loss buffer, expressed as a percentage of their Risk-Weighted Assets. Higher is better. It may be increased by issuing common (or making some money and keeping it); preferred issuance will not change it.
E is the number that OSFI and fixed-income investors will be watching. Higher is better, and it may be increased by issuing preferreds.
F is less sexy than E, but still important.
G is even less sexy than F, but PAY ATTENTION!

August 28, 2008

Thursday, August 28th, 2008

Nothing happened today.

Note that these indices are experimental; the absolute and relative daily values are expected to change in the final version. In this version, index values are based at 1,000.0 on 2006-6-30
Index Mean Current Yield (at bid) Mean YTW Mean Average Trading Value Mean Mod Dur (YTW) Issues Day’s Perf. Index Value
Ratchet N/A N/A N/A N/A 0 N/A N/A
Fixed-Floater 4.60% 4.38% 58,290 16.41 7 -0.0690% 1,113.9
Floater 4.04% 4.08% 43,153 17.19 3 +0.5729% 914.9
Op. Retract 4.97% 3.85% 111,108 2.55 17 -0.0146% 1,054.7
Split-Share 5.35% 5.85% 55,144 4.36 14 +0.2384% 1,042.9
Interest Bearing 6.25% 6.62% 45,613 5.26 2 0.0000% 1,129.2
Perpetual-Premium 6.16% 5.41% 64,674 2.25 1 +1.1415% 1,007.3
Perpetual-Discount 6.07% 6.12% 192,859 13.55 70 +0.0969% 878.0
Major Price Changes
Issue Index Change Notes
ELF.PR.F PerpetualDiscount -3.2080% Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 6.98% based on a bid of 19.31 and a limitMaturity.
CIU.PR.A PerpetualDiscount -1.5544% Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 6.09% based on a bid of 19.00 and a limitMaturity.
ELF.PR.G PerpetualDiscount -1.3098% Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 6.97% based on a bid of 17.33 and a limitMaturity.
IGM.PR.A OpRet -1.1342% Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 4.34% based on a bid of 26.15 and a call 2010-7-30 at 25.67.
TCA.PR.X PerpetualDiscount -1.0052% Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 5.94% based on a bid of 47.27 and a limitMaturity.
BAM.PR.N PerpetualDiscount +1.0766% Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 7.18% based on a bid of 16.90 and a limitMaturity.
CM.PR.G PerpetualDiscount +1.0821% Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 6.67% based on a bid of 20.55 and a limitMaturity.
CL.PR.B PerpetualDiscount +1.1415% Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 5.41% based on a bid of 25.36 and a call 2011-1-30 at 25.00.
MFC.PR.C PerpetualDiscount +1.1423% Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 5.79% based on a bid of 19.48 and a limitMaturity.
GWO.PR.F PerpetualDiscount +1.3124% Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 5.79% based on a bid of 25.01 and a call 2012-10-30 at 25.00.
BAM.PR.B Floater +1.3506%  
POW.PR.C PerpetualDiscount +1.3942% Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 6.13% based on a bid of 24.00 and a limitMaturity.
FBS.PR.B SplitShare +1.7672% Asset coverage of just under 1.5:1 as of August 21, according to TD Securities. Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 5.41% based on a bid of 9.79 and a hardMaturity 2011-12-15 at 10.00.
Volume Highlights
Issue Index Volume Notes
RY.PR.D PerpetualDiscount 180,900 TD crossed 16,300 at 18.60 and 100,000 at 18.70. Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 6.08% based on a bid of 18.66 and a limitMaturity.
RY.PR.C PerpetualDiscount 96,392 National bought 10,000 from Scotia at 19.00; so did “anonymous”. RBC crossed 30,000 at 19.15. Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 6.04% based on a bid of 19.19 and a limitMaturity.
PWF.PR.K PerpetualDiscount 65,600 RBC crossed 28,800 at 20.50, then another 20,000 at the same price. Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 6.12% based on a bid of 20.50 and a limitMaturity.
TD.PR.Q PerpetualDiscount 57,275 Anonymous – possibly a different one every time – bought three blocks of 10,000 each from TD at 24.75. Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 5.71% based on a bid of 24.76 and a limitMaturity.
RY.PR.B PerpetualDiscount 44,020 TD crossed 10,100 at 19.40. Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 6.11% based on a bid of 19.40 and a limitMaturity.

There were thirty-two other index-included $25-pv-equivalent issues trading over 10,000 shares today.

Sub-Prime – Not Completely Bad Underwriting

Thursday, August 28th, 2008

The Great Credit Crunch of 2007-?? will be rich source of theses and fistfights for many years to come. The New York Fed has published a staff paper by Andrew Haughwout, Richard Peach and Joseph Tracy titled Juvenile Delinquent Mortgages: Bad Credit or Bad Economy?

Even borrowers with negative equity, however, default less frequently than simple models would predict (see Vandell 1995 for a summary of the empirical evidence and Elul 2006 for an update). For an owner occupant considering default, transactions costs include moving costs, the cost of purchasing or renting a new residence, and damage to one’s credit score resulting in higher future borrowing costs. All told, some authors have argued that these costs can typically range from 15 to 30% of the value of the house, helping to explain why default appears to be underexercised relative to the simple option-theoretic prediction (Cunningham and Hendershott, 1984). Investors face fewer of these transaction costs and therefore may be more likely to default for a given LTV level.

The rapid house price increases in the boom/bust states prior to the downturn would act to keep the put option for default out-of-the-money. Even where the lender finances most or all of the borrower’s down payment with a 2nd lien loan, twelve months of double-digit house price appreciation will generate more than sufficient equity to cover the transactions costs of selling the house. Similarly, in cases where a borrower in a boom/bust state suffers a job loss, divorce or significant health problem during the boom period, we would not expect to see this result in a default. The borrower would have a financial incentive to sell the house and prepay the mortgage rather than default. Finally, as discussed earlier, owners may be less likely to exercise the default put option than investors other things equal.

Despite the focus in the press made on no-doc mortgages, in each year the incidence of no-doc mortgages was in single digits, and was declining over the sample period. What is more notable is the shift in composition from fully documented to limited documented underwriting. From 2001 to 2006, the share of fully documented subprime mortgages fell from 77.8 percent to 61.7 percent, while the share of fully documented alt-a mortgages fell from 36.8 percent to 18.9 percent.

For borrowers with negative equity, the data indicate that investors appear to be much more likely than owners to default. The point estimate for the incremental effect on the default rate is over 24.6 percentage points for subprime investors and 20.3 percentage points for alt-a investors

The major difference between 2003 and 2005-2007 was a dramatic change in house price appreciation. After rising nearly 14% in 2003, the OFHEO index accelerated to 16% in 2004 before slowing and eventually reversing. For 2005-2007, OFHEO grew 10%, 1% and –4% respectively.31 The decomposition indicates that changes in economic variables, particularly this reversal in house price appreciation, from 2003-2007 account for the bulk of our explanation for observed increases in early defaults. In 2006, we estimate that changes in the economy added 2.4 percentage points to the average early default rate for subprime loans, while in 2007 that figure rises to 4.1 percentage points.

“Bad Credit,” on the other hand, contributes less to our explained rise in average early defaults. Had the economy continued to produce unemployment and house price appreciation rates in 2005 through 2007 like those in 2003, our model predicts that changes in the credit profiles of new nonprime mortgages in each year would result in an increases in average early default rates for subprime loans of less than a percentage point in each year.

We use loan-level data on securitized nonprime mortgages to examine what we refer to as “juvenile delinquency”: default or serious delinquency in the first year following a mortgage’s origination. Early default became much more common for loans originated in 2005-2007. Two complementary explanations have been offered for this phenomenon. The industry-standard explanation of default behavior focuses attention on a relaxation of lending standards after 2003.

We see evidence of this in our data, as some underwriting criteria, particularly loan-to-value ratios at origination, deteriorated. At the same time, however, the housing market experienced a sharp and pervasive downturn, a factor which has received attention in recent research. Our results suggest that while both of these factors – bad credit and bad economy – played a role in increasing early defaults starting in 2005, changes to the economy appear to have played the larger role.

Perhaps as important a finding is that, in spite of the set of covariates we control for, our model predicts at most 43 percent of the annual increase in subprime early defaults during the 2005-2007 period. Observable changes in standard underwriting standards and key economic measures appear to be unable to explain the majority of the run-up in early defaults. The fact, noted in our introduction, that many participants in the industry appeared to have been surprised by the degree of the increase in early defaults is in some sense verified here: observable characteristics of the loans, borrowers and economy seem to leave much unexplained, even with the benefit of hindsight. The difference between what we predict, conditional on observables, and what we actually observe is the difference between a bad few years for lenders/investors and a full-blown credit crunch.

The data does indicate a significant difference in behavior between owners and investors, especially in terms of how they respond to downward movements in house prices and negative equity situations. This has implications for underwriting. First, there may be payoffs to increased efforts at determining the true occupancy status of the borrower as part of the underwriting process. Second, originators may want to require additional equity up front from investors to reduce the likelihood that future house price declines could push the investor into negative equity.

In other words, a good part of the sub-prime debacle can be blamed not just on poor under-writing and the fashionably loathed originate-and-distribute model, but on a failure of investors to understand that they were short a put on housing prices … or, if they understood that, to price the put option properly.

Origin of US Treasury Bill Market

Thursday, August 28th, 2008

OK, this is way off topic. I admit that freely. But I really enjoyed the paper by Kenneth D. Garbade recently published by the New York Fed: Why the US Treasury Began Auctioning Treasury Bills in 1929:

The U.S. Treasury began auctioning Treasury bills in 1929 to correct several flaws in the post-war structure of Treasury financing operations. The flaws included underpricing securities sold in fixed-price subscription offerings, infrequent financings that necessitated borrowing in advance of need, and payment with deposit credits that gave banks an added incentive to oversubscribe to new issues and contributed to the appearance of weak post-offering secondary markets for new issues.

All three flaws could have been addressed without introducing a new class of securities. For example, the Treasury could have begun auctioning certificates of indebtedness (instead of bills), it could have begun offering certificates between quarterly tax dates, and it could have begun selling certificates for immediately available funds. However, by introducing a new class of securities, the Treasury was able to address the defects in the existing primary market structure even as it continued to maintain that structure. If auction sales, tactical issuance, and settlement in immediately available funds proved successful, the new procedure could be expanded to notes and bonds. If subsequent experience revealed an unanticipated flaw in the new procedure, however, the Treasury was free to return to exclusive reliance on regularly scheduled fixed-price subscription offerings and payment by credit to War Loan accounts. The introduction of Treasury bills in 1929 gave the Treasury an exit strategy—as well as a way forward—in the development of the primary market for Treasury securities.

I also found the following to be amusing:

Bidding on a price basis insulated the Treasury from specifying how bids in terms of interest rates would be converted to prices. Market participants used a variety of conventions. For example, the price of a bill with n days to maturity quoted at a discount rate of D is P = 100 – (n/360)×D. The price of the same bill quoted at a money market yield of R is P = 100/[1+.01×(n/360)×R]. In the case of a ninety-day bill quoted at 4.50 percent, P = 98.875 if the quoted rate is a discount rate, that is, if D = 4.50 percent, and P = 98.888 if the quoted rate is a money market yield, that is, if R = 4.50 percent.

Some things never change!

NA Capitalization: 3Q08

Thursday, August 28th, 2008

NA has released its Third Quarter 2008 Report and Supplementary Package, so it’s time to recalculate how much room they have to issue new preferred shares – assuming they want to!

Step One is to analyze their Tier 1 Capital, reproducing the prior format:

NA Capital Structure
October, 2007
& July, 2008
  4Q07 3Q08
Total Tier 1 Capital 4,442 5,534
Common Shareholders’ Equity 95.0% 84.3%
Preferred Shares 9.0% 14.0%
Innovative Tier 1 Capital Instruments 11.4% 15.0%
Non-Controlling Interests in Subsidiaries 0.4% 0.5%
Goodwill -15.8% -13.0%
Miscellaneous NA -0.7%
‘Miscellaneous’ includes ‘short positions of own shares’ and ‘securitization related deductions’

Next, the issuance capacity (from Part 3 of the introductory series):

NA
Tier 1 Issuance Capacity
October 2007
& July 2008
  4Q07 3Q08
Equity Capital (A) 3,534 3,930
Non-Equity Tier 1 Limit (B=A/3), 4Q07
(B=0.428*A), 2Q08
1,178 1,682
Innovative Tier 1 Capital (C) 508 830
Preferred Limit (D=B-C) 670 852
Preferred Actual (E) 400 774
New Issuance Capacity (F=D-E) 270 78
Items A, C & E are taken from the table
“Risk Adjusted Capital Ratiosl”
of the supplementary information;
Note that Item A includes everything except preferred shares and innovative capital instruments


Item B is as per OSFI Guidelines; the limit was recently increased.
Items D & F are my calculations

and the all important Risk-Weighted Asset Ratios!

NA
Risk-Weighted Asset Ratios
October 2007
& July 2008
  Note 2007 3Q08
Equity Capital A 3,534 3,930
Risk-Weighted Assets B 49,336 55,557
Equity/RWA C=A/B 7.16% 7.07%
Tier 1 Ratio D 9.0% 10.0%
Capital Ratio E 12.4% 13.9%
Assets to Capital Multiple F 18.6x 15.7x
A is taken from the table “Issuance Capacity”, above
B, D & E are taken from RY’s Supplementary Report
C is my calculation
F is taken from the OSFI site for 4Q07. The 2Q08 figure is approximated by subtracting goodwill of 707 from total assets of 123,608 to obtain adjusted assets of 122,901 and dividing by 7,353 total capital. The result of 16.7x was in agreement with the figure ultimately reported by OSFI. The 3Q08 figure subtracts goodwill of 722 from total assets of 121,931 [Page 1 of Sup] to obtain adjusted assets of 121,209 and dividing by 7,730 total capital.

National Bank does not disclose its Assets-to-Capital Multiple. Their Report to Shareholders simply states (Note 4):

In addition to regulatory capital ratios, banks are expected to meet an assets-to-capital multiple test. The assets-to-capital multiple is calculated by dividing a bank’s total assets, including specified off-balance sheet items, by its total capital. Under this test, total assets should not be greater than 23 times the total capital. The Bank met the assets-to-capital multiple test in the third quarter of 2008.

Well … at least they’re delevering! It is also interesting to note that they have – basically – maxed out on their expanded allowance of non-equity Tier 1 Capital.

TD Capitalization: 3Q08

Thursday, August 28th, 2008

TD has released its Third Quarter 2008 Report and Supplementary Package, so it’s time to recalculate how much room they have to issue new preferred shares – assuming they want to!

Step One is to analyze their Tier 1 Capital, reproducing the prior format:

TD Capital Structure
October, 2007
& July, 2008
  4Q07 3Q08
Total Tier 1 Capital 15,645 17,491
Common Shareholders’ Equity 131.5% 164.3%
Preferred Shares 6.2% 12.4%
Innovative Tier 1 Capital Instruments 11.1% 10.0%
Non-Controlling Interests in Subsidiaries 0.1% 0.1%
Goodwill -49.0% -84.4%
Miscellaneous NA -2.5%
‘Common Shareholders Equity’ includes ‘Common Shares’, ‘Contributed Surplus’, ‘Retained Earnings’ and ‘FX net of Hedging’
‘Miscellaneous’ includes ‘Securitization Allowance’, ‘ALLL/EL shortfall’ and ‘Other’.

Next, the issuance capacity (from Part 3 of the introductory series):

TD
Tier 1 Issuance Capacity
October 2007
& July 2008
  4Q07 3Q08
Equity Capital (A) 12,931 13,563
Non-Equity Tier 1 Limit (B=A/3), 4Q07
(B=0.428*A), 2Q08
4,310 5,805
Innovative Tier 1 Capital (C) 1,740 1,753
Preferred Limit (D=B-C) 2,570 4,052
Preferred Actual (E) 974 2,175
New Issuance Capacity (F=D-E) 1,346 1,877
Items A, C & E are taken from the table
“Regulatory Capital”
of the supplementary information;
Note that Item A includes everything except preferred shares and innovative instruments


Item B is as per OSFI Guidelines; the limit was recently increased.
Items D & F are my calculations

and the all important Risk-Weighted Asset Ratios!

TD
Risk-Weighted Asset Ratios
October 2007
& July 2008
  Note 2007 3Q08
Equity Capital A 12,931 13,563
Risk-Weighted Assets B 152,519 184,674
Equity/RWA C=A/B 8.48% 7.34%
Tier 1 Ratio D 10.3% 9.5%
Capital Ratio E 13.0% 13.4%
Assets to Capital Multiple F 19.7x 17.9x
A is taken from the table “Issuance Capacity”, above
B, D & E are taken from TD’s Supplementary Report
C is my calculation.
F is from Note 9 of the quarterly report

The reported Assets-to-capital multiple reflects that goodwill is deducted from total capital (the denominator) AND FROM TOTAL ASSETS (the numerator); given TD’s huge goodwill, this makes rather a difference! It is noteworthy that they have delevered so much in the past year.

The average credit risk-weight of the assets has increased to 26.6% in 3Q08 from 24.6% in 1Q08, largely due to Corporate lending, which during this period has increased to 26.0% from 24.8% of total exposure and to 46.2% from 40.6% of risk-weighted exposure.

RY Capitalization: 3Q08

Thursday, August 28th, 2008

RY has released its Third Quarter 2008 Report and Supplementary Package, so it’s time to recalculate how much room they have to issue new preferred shares – assuming they want to!

Step One is to analyze their Tier 1 Capital, reproducing the prior format:

RY Capital Structure
October, 2007
& July, 2008
  4Q07 3Q08
Total Tier 1 Capital 23,383 24,150
Common Shareholders’ Equity 95.2% 111.6%
Preferred Shares 10.0% 10.6%
Innovative Tier 1 Capital Instruments 14.9% 15.3%
Non-Controlling Interests in Subsidiaries 0.1% 1.5%
Goodwill -20.3% -36.7%
Miscellaneous NA -2.3%
‘Miscellaneous’ includes ‘Substantial Investments’, ‘Securitization-related deductions’, ‘Expected loss in excess of allowance’ and ‘Other’

Next, the issuance capacity (from Part 3 of the introductory series):

RY
Tier 1 Issuance Capacity
October 2007
& July 2008
  4Q07 3Q08
Equity Capital (A) 17,545 17,892
Non-Equity Tier 1 Limit (B=A/3), 4Q07
(B=0.428*A), 2Q08
5,848 7,658
Innovative Tier 1 Capital (C) 3,494 3,706
Preferred Limit (D=B-C) 2,354 3,952
Preferred Actual (E) 2,344 2,552
New Issuance Capacity (F=D-E) 10 1,400
Items A, C & E are taken from the table
“Regulatory Capital”
of the supplementary information;
Note that Item A includes everything except preferred shares and innovative capital instruments


Item B is as per OSFI Guidelines; the limit was recently increased.
Items D & F are my calculations

and the all important Risk-Weighted Asset Ratios!

RY
Risk-Weighted Asset Ratios
October 2007
& July 2008
  Note 2007 3Q08
Equity Capital A 17,545 17,892
Risk-Weighted Assets B 247,635 254,189
Equity/RWA C=A/B 7.09% 7.04%
Tier 1 Ratio D 9.4% 9.5%
Capital Ratio E 11.5% 11.7%
Assets to Capital Multiple F 19.8x 19.4x
A is taken from the table “Issuance Capacity”, above
B, D, E & F are taken from RY’s Supplementary Report
C is my calculation.

It’s good to see that RY has reduced its Assets-to-Capital multiple to within normal bounds (this has not always been the case) – even if we follow international practice and retain the EL/ALLL deductions, the ratio is 19.8x.

We see from the supplementary data that the average credit risk weight of their assets has increased from 23% in 2Q08 to 25% in 3Q08, which ties in with the minimal change in their capital ratios. This, in turn, is due to a decline in their “Trading-Related” exposure, in which “Repo-Style Transactions”, with a risk-weight of 2%, has declined to total exposure of $151-billion from $168-billion.