April 18, 2008

Willem Buiter writes a gloomy piece on financial activity, If it’s broke, fix it, but how?. Hat tip to Naked Capitalism, who commented on the piece … but quite frankly, NC’s commentary can’t be taken seriously:

3. Prohibit Level 3 assets; allow only Level 1 and strictly defined and audited Level 2 assets. This means regulators will not have anything overly arcane to assess; they ought to be able to get a clear picture of risks, processes, and exposures if they are dogged.

4. Prohibit these regulated institutions from lending, providing other funding, or investing in concerns that have Level 3 assets

This is the sort of populist nonsense that betrays complete lack of understanding of the issue. In the first place bonds of virtually all kinds are Level 2 assets – even off-the-run government bonds are marked off half a dozen or so benchmarks. A liquid corporate issue might trade a few times a week – and every time (other than in the highly liquid distribution phase) it will be done at a ballpark guess of a spread to governments (by “ballpark guess”, I mean “what the trader thinks he can get away with”). Things like municipals in the States … well, have a gander at what Accrued Interest had to say on the issue.

Level 3 assets? Let’s talk about preferred shares, just for a moment, to lend some credence to the idea that this blog is about prefs. Say I have to value an issue that has something approximating a current coupon … maybe the new NA issue, for instance. If I price NA.PR.M based on the yield of the two other prefs from this issuer, then it’s a level 2 asset. However, this is a really bad mark – it makes no allowance for convexity. If, however, I adjust the “static”, level 2 price in any way to account for the “dynamic” effect of convexity, then my poor little NA.PR.M become level 3 assets … “convexity” is not an observable input.

One may well wish to impose a regime on regulated capital that allows the firm to assign a range to the unobservable inputs and have them use whichever end of the range is least favourable when valuing their securities for regulatory purposes. One may well wish to increase the capital requirements for level 2 and level 3 assets. But to speak of strict controls and prohibitions is simply a sign of hysteria.

Anyway, back to Prof. Buiter. He leads with an assertion that we have achieved the worst of two worlds:

I believe that the Western model of financial capitalism – a convex combination of relationships-based financial capitalism and transactions-based financial capitalism – has, in its most recent manifestations (those developed since the great liberalisations of the 1980s), managed to enhance the worst features of these two ideal-types and to suppress the best.

These worlds are defined as:

Transactions-based financial capitalism emphasizes arms-length relationships mediated through markets (preferably competitive ones), is strong on flexibility, encourages risk-trading, entry, exit and innovation. It is lousy at endogenous commitment: reputation and trust are not a natural by-product of arms-length relationships. Commitment requires external, third-party enforcement.

Relationships-based financial capitalism emphasizes long-term relationships and commitment. It has, however, compensating weaknesses. Investing time and other resources in building up relationships with customers creates an insider-outsider divide that is very difficult to overcome for new entrants. It also encourages, through the interlocking directorates of the CEOs and Chairmen (seldom women) of financial and non-financial corporations, a cosy coterie of old boys for whom competitive behaviour soon no longer comes naturally. At its worst, it becomes cronyism of the kind that was one of the key ingredients in the Asian crisis of 1997.

I think I will be referring to these definitions a lot in the future! Relationships-based financial capitalism describes the standard business model of a stockbroker or retail-level financial advisor. Transactions-based financial capitalism describes the standard business model of an asset manager. But remember – these are my characterizations, not Dr. Buiter’s.

Importantly, virtually everybody will claim that they want and need the latter, but most retail (and a hefty chunk of institutional) clients will go for the former when it comes time to sign a cheque.

So … now we’ve defined some terms, what’s the problem?

It is clear where the problems are. In the past 20 yearns, the financial sector has, starting as a useful provider of intermediation services, grown like topsy to become an uncontrolled, and at times out-of-control, effectively unregulated, hydra-headed owner of licenses to print money for a small number of beneficiaries. The sources of much of these profits turned out to be either a succession of bubbles or Ponzi schemes, or the pricing of assets based on the belief that risk disappeared by trading it. This belief that there is a black hole in the middle of the financial universe that will attract, absorb and annihilate risk if the risk it packaged sufficiently attractive and sold a sufficient number of times is closely related to the firm conviction of every trader I have ever met, that he or she can systematically beat the market. The fact that all traders together are the market did not constrain these beliefs.

This is a rather breathtaking condemnation and, quite frankly, I do not find much support for these assertions in the text. I can hypothesize, however, using the assumption that the explanation of the huge amount of CDO assets on the Merrill Lynch books (discussed on April 16) is correct (and making a few interpretations). In this case, we would say that the CDO-syndicator is using the worst of the transactions model: he didn’t care about the firm, as long as he could get the stuff off his books and onto the trader’s books. The trader, bullied into inventorying paper he didn’t think he could sell, agreed to the deal due to relationships model: he was making good money as a Merrill trader, and refusing the urgent request of the big powerful syndicator could jeopordize his position. If this is the case, it reflects a failure on the part of Merrill’s management to ensure that such asymmetric viewpoints are minimized.

Could it be true? Well, it’s plausible. And I like it a whole lot more than the everybody-is-stupid-except-me model.

Naturally, the first thing that comes to mind after Dr. Buiter’s assessment of the industry is MORE RULES!

It would be part of the solution if we could find and keep the right regulators and design and implement the right regulations.

… which immediately runs into the problem …

regulators involved in intrusive and hands-on regulation are virtually guaranteed to be captured by the industry they are meant to be regulating and supervising. This regulatory capture need not take the form of unethical, corrupt or venal behaviour by the regulators or members of the private financial sector. It could instead be an example of what I have called cognitive regulatory capture, where the regulator absorbs the culture, norms, hopes, fears and world-view of those whom he regulates.

Sure. Especially with revolving-door regulation being such a popular model. There is another problem:

regulators will serve their own parochial, personal and sectional interests as much as or even instead of the public good they are meant to serve. No bank regulator wants a bank to fail on his or her watch. As a result, either excessively conservative behaviour will be imposed by the regulator on the regulated bank or other financial intermediary (ofi), that is, we will have if-it-moves-stop-it-regulation, or the regulator will mount an unjustified bail out when, despite the regulator’s best efforts at preventing any kind of risk from being taken on by the regulated entity, insolvency threatens.

This is especially the case if, for instance, one takes the editorial stance of the Globe and Mail seriously. They decided that Canadian ABCP was a problem indicative of a failure of regulation, then decided that since OSFI is a regulator, they are at fault. This started with misrepresentation of a speech and continues with wild charges of loopholes, as mentioned on April 11. Despite the fact that you don’t really need more than a handful of functional brain cells to dismiss the charges as nonsense, these gross distortions can’t be a lot of fun for a regulator to endure, and will lead Our Beloved Government to impose MORE RULES!

Anyway, Prof. Buiter has the intellectual honesty to admit:

I don’t know the solution to this conundrum.

I suggest, as I have suggested before, that regulations need tweaking. So the off-balance-sheet vehicles weren’t as off-balance-sheet as they might have been? Make the sponsors consolidate them for regulatory capital purposes if they are intimately involved in the vehicle – e.g., by being the selling agents of the SIV’s paper, or having their name on the fund, or by getting miscellaneous fees from the SIV. Allow a reduced hit due to first loss protection. Lots of details will emerge through discussion. If they’re sponsoring a money market fund (same thing, opposite direction), they should take a charge. It would seem that rules on the assets to capital multiple need to be reviewed, since a lot of the problem was the zero risk weight assigned to synthetic-AAAs by the regulatory authorities.

And for heaven’s sake, let’s approach regulation with the idea that the objective is to mitigate and contain harm, not to eliminate it. How many times must I repeat? Risk is Risky!

When will people learn? You can’t regulate fear and greed. Ask a Chinese or Russian pensioner how well that idea works out! As long as we have fear and greed, we will have booms and busts. And as long as we have stupidity, we will have people being hurt – sometimes badly – through over-exposure to a single class of risk.

From the oh-hell-I’ve-run-out-of-time-here’s-some-links Department comes a speech by David Einhorn of GreenLight Capital, referenced by another blog. Einhorn is always thoughtful and entertaining, although it must be remembered that at all times he is talking his book. The problem with the current speech is that there is not enough detail – for instance, he equates Carlyle’s leverage of 30:1 which was based on GSE paper held naked with brokerages leverage, which is (er, I meant to say “should be”, of course!) hedged – to a greater or lesser degree, depending upon the institution’s committment to moderately sane risk management. But there are some interesting nuggets in the speech that offer food for thought.

Accrued Interest speculates that European credit strains make short-dollar a risky trade:

So rising Libor may say more about tight liquidity in Europe than in the U.S. A combination of tough liquidity in Europe and among smaller banks would explain the divergence between CDS spreads and Libor spreads.

To me, this sends two cautions. First, it should remind anyone who thinks the liquidity crunch is over, that it ain’t. Liquidity does seem to be improving in the U.S. bond market, which is a very positive sign. So maybe the worst case scenario has been taken out. But this will be a long process.

Second, it should caution those who are short the dollar. If the next phase of the credit crunch hits Europe as hard as it hits the U.S., then we may see the Bank of England and the European Central Bank get more aggressive with rate cuts.

Barclays PLC disagrees. Takes two to make a market!

No real direction in the preferred share market today – and not much individual issue price volatility either. Volume returned to levels that are normal for now, but would have been labelled light last year.

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 5.09% 5.13% 29,160 15.34 2 +0.0017% 1,089.3
Fixed-Floater 4.78% 5.19% 62,409 15.29 8 +0.2712% 1,044.8
Floater 5.01% 5.06% 64,987 15.45 2 +0.0820% 831.0
Op. Retract 4.85% 3.34% 86,638 3.33 15 +0.0327% 1,047.7
Split-Share 5.35% 5.88% 87,118 4.08 14 +0.2828% 1,035.1
Interest Bearing 6.18% 6.29% 63,181 3.88 3 -0.3025% 1,096.4
Perpetual-Premium 5.91% 4.41% 188,316 5.52 7 +0.1471% 1,018.0
Perpetual-Discount 5.66% 5.70% 318,271 13.82 64 -0.1101% 921.0
Major Price Changes
Issue Index Change Notes
SLF.PR.D PerpetualDiscount -1.4521% Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 5.52% based on a bid of 20.36 and a limitMaturity.
BNS.PR.K PerpetualDiscount -1.4027% Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 5.51% based on a bid of 21.79 and a limitMaturity.
FTU.PR.A SplitShare +1.0357% Asset coverage of 1.4+:1 as of April 15 according to the company. Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 8.63% based on a bid of 8.78 and a hardMaturity 2012-12-1 at 10.00.
GWO.PR.H PerpetualDiscount +1.0570% Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 5.56% based on a bid of 21.99 and a limitMaturity.
GWO.PR.E OpRet +1.1319% Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 3.25% based on a bid of 25.91 and a call 2009-4-30 at 25.50.
ELF.PR.F PerpetualDiscount +1.1815% Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 6.24% based on a bid of 21.41 and a limitMaturity.
Volume Highlights
Issue Index Volume Notes
RY.PR.W PerpetualDiscount 102,318 Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 5.49% based on a bid of 22.65 and a limitMaturity.
BMO.PR.I OpRet 85,500 Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of -1.45% based on a bid of 25.30 and a call 2008-5-18 at 25.00.
NA.PR.M PerpetualDiscount 74,325 Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 6.04% based on a bid of 25.00 and a limitMaturity.
CM.PR.H PerpetualDiscount 64,442 Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 5.92% based on a bid of 20.40 and a limitMaturity.
RY.PR.C PerpetualDiscount 63,650 Now with a pre-tax bid-YTW of 5.62% based on a bid of 20.81 and a limitMaturity.

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

7 Responses to “April 18, 2008”

  1. davejphys says:

    I am curious of what you think of this situation. There is a Puerto Rican bank on the edge of failure called R&G Financial. Ticker is RGFC.PK.

    They also have a few series of preferred shares. For example RGFCN.PK. It looks like this bank will be sold in piece or piecemeal. For example, this story in Caribbean Business
    http://www.prwow.com/news/eng/news_detail.php?nt_id=18173&ct_id=2

    These preferred yield about 20%. The company warned that they would likely not be paying dividends in the near future on these and that they are looking into options for selling the bank.

    So if the bank is liquidated and there is money to pay something to common shareholders, the preferred holders should get paid at par which would be almost a triple from today’s prices or a double at least. A sale or merger might not count as liquidation. They say this explicitly in the prospectus. I am wondering what would happen under that scenario. I assume that the purchasing bank would simply take over the dividends. Even then, I would expect them to trade close to par.

    So besides the fact that the sale price might not be enough to make the preferred whole at par (a small chance I think), is there anything I need to look out for? There is liquidity risk of course. They have a 30% bid-ask spread so I don’t want to have to sell them of I buy. If the sale price is the only thing to worry about, this might be a good investment.

    I would appreciate your insights.
    Thanks,
    Dave
    davejphys@yahoo.com

  2. madequota says:

    Dave; I’m not sure what Mr. Hymas thinks about this one, but after reading your post, as well as the linked article, I couldn’t help but to be reminded of an outfit back in the 90’s formerly known as Central Capital Corp. This was a holding company for the better known retail entity, Central Guaranty Trust.

    Like R & G, they had plenty of assets, tons of goodwill, and a variety of series of preferred shares. By the time the carnage was over, TD who took over Central Guaranty’s branches, and a newly formed entity I believe called YMG Capital made sure that common and pref holders of both Central Cap and Central Guaranty saw not much more than one or two cents on the dollar.

    And this was in Canada, where regulation was probably somewhat more investor-friendly than what might exist in Puerto Rico right now.

    I would steer clear of this one. Pref holders will probably be left with little more than memories of warm weather in this case.

    madequota

  3. prefhound says:

    I tend to agree with madequota.

    What I would add is that banks are so highly leveraged that liabilities are, for the sake of example, 10X common equity. Even a 10% loss on the liabilities wipes out the common shareholders. Pref shares stand between common and bonds. In this simplistic example, if Prefs are 25% of common equity (so 4% of liabilities), then the prefs can only (theoretically; simplistically) have residual value if the losses are between 10% and 14%. At 10% only the common is wiped out. At 14% the common and the prefs are wiped out. Between 10 and 14% the prefs go from par to zero — kind of like tranching in a structured product.

    Thus, unless you can precisely estimate the losses that will be realized, AND be certain losses will fall (in the example) between 10 and 14%, AND the losses won’t be manipulated to the buyers advantage AND be certain the simplistic model applies, buying the prefs is just a crap shoot.

  4. davejphys says:

    Thanks for the intelligent comments. I went over the Federal Reserve regulatory reports (the FRY9Cs) last night and left these posts on the R&G message board.

    http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/Stocks_%28A_to_Z%29/Stocks_R/threadview?m=tm&bn=22334&tid=925&mid=925&tof=15&frt=1

    I am coming to the same conclusion that there is real risk here. Basically, the bank seems to have borrowed and that is coming due about now, that it might not be able to refinance. That is similar to Doral (another Puerto Rican bank) if you are familiar to that one. R&G tried to get their financial restatements finished in time to raise capital but appear to have failed at that. So I guessing that the Fed is forcing a sale/merger. Their only other option is BK but that would be disastrous. They have 338MM of equity capital, 213MM of preferred capital and so only 125MM of common equity. However they have 524MM of non-performing loans. They also have about 272MM in dubious assets such as intangibles, accrued but non received interest, deferred tax assets, and 105MM in assets with no explanation.

    That article quoting the anonymous source talks about how these various other banks may pay a lot for pieces of the bank. But they don’t say anyone is willing to take all of the bank including non-performing loans and liabilities. In other words, it is in no way clear that common or preferred shareholders will get anything.

  5. jiHymas says:

    All I can say about these issues is … I really don’t know.

    The bank is so distressed that the prefs can no longer be analyzed as fixed income. The common equity has evaporated and now the preferreds are, for all intents and purposes, in a first loss position. This does not appear to be a situation that will be resolved by cutting the common dividend and issuing mass quantities of highly dilutive common.

    So they have to be valued as equities – and I, alas, am a fixed income specialist.

  6. […] material for the column was a speech by David Einhorn, which was reported briefly by PrefBlog on April 18: From the oh-hell-I’ve-run-out-of-time-here’s-some-links Department comes a speech by […]

  7. […] material for the column was a speech by David Einhorn, which was reported briefly by PrefBlog on April 18: From the oh-hell-I’ve-run-out-of-time-here’s-some-links Department comes a speech by […]

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