PrefBlog

Another negative bill rate for the textbooks:

Germany sold six-month treasury bills at a negative yield for the first time amid demand for the debt securities of Europe’s biggest economy as a haven from the sovereign debt crisis roiling the region.

The government auctioned 3.9 billion euros ($4.98 billion) of securities maturing in July at an average yield of minus 0.0122 percent, the Federal Finance Agency said in an e-mailed statement today. It was the first time it sold the securities at a negative yield, Joerg Mueller, a spokesman in Frankfurt, said in a telephone interview. The Netherlands sold 107-day bills at minus 0.007 percent on Dec. 12.

Merkozy wants to eliminate trading in the EU:

French President Nicolas Sarkozy won the backing of German Chancellor Angela Merkel for a tax on financial transactions, a levy that Britain maintains won’t work unless it’s applied worldwide.

The French government, long a proponent of the tax, stepped up its campaign last week, going so far as to suggest that France would impose the levy even if others didn’t. At a joint press conference in Berlin with Sarkozy today, Merkel threw her weight behind the tax.

“Personally, I’m in favor of thinking about such a tax in the euro zone,” Merkel said. “Germany and France both equally view the financial transaction tax as a correct response.”

The European Commission in September suggested a tax of 0.1 percent on equity and bond transactions, and 0.01 percent on derivatives, which it said could raise 55 billion euros ($71 billion) a year. European Union finance ministers are due to discuss the levy in March.

All the trading will move to London … or Geneva … or Dubai … or Singapore. If they try to apply it to settlement, they’ll lose all their settlement business as well.

It was another strong day for the Canadian preferred share market, with PerpetualDiscounts winning 37bp, FixedResets flat and DeemedRetractibles gaining 30bp. The Bozo Spread (Current Yield PerpetualDiscounts less Current Yield FixedResets) is now at a mere 2bp! There was a good amount of volatility, with insurers again being notable among the winners. Volume remained very light. Enbridge issues were very active, presumably due to portfolio shuffling inspired by the new issue.

It’s not clear to me what has caused this burst of good performance, but it would not surprise me to learn that a decision has been made to apply the NVCC rules to insurers and insurance holding companies, and that word of this decision has been leaked. Pure speculation of course – and I strongly advise against anybody taking a position based on the thought – but … interesting.

Good US jobs number:

U.S. employers added more workers to payrolls than forecast in December and the jobless rate declined to an almost three-year low, showing that the labor market gained momentum heading into 2012.

The 200,000 increase followed a revised 100,000 rise in November that was smaller than first estimated, Labor Department figures showed in Washington. The median projection in a Bloomberg News survey called for a December gain of 155,000. The unemployment rate unexpectedly fell to 8.5 percent, the lowest since February 2009, while hours worked and earnings climbed.

Less rosy is Canada’s employment news:

Canada’s unemployment rate (CANLXEMR) rose for a third month in December, the longest advance in two years, as a gain in jobs trailed growth of the labor force.

The jobless rate increased to 7.5 percent from November’s 7.4 percent and the recent low of 7.1 percent in September, Statistics Canada said today in Ottawa. Employment (CANLNETJ) rose by 17,500, the first gain in three months. Over the past six months, the number of jobs has grown by 7,400, compared with a gain of 191,800 in the first half of 2011.

Fitch has joined the other major agencies – Hungary is junk:

Fitch became the third ratings agency to downgrade Hungary’s debt to “junk” status on Friday, invoking further deterioration in the country’s fiscal and external financing and growth outlook and the government’s “unorthodox” economic policies.

Banks in euro zone countries have significant exposure to Hungary, with Austrian financial institutions having more than $40 billion in the country, Italian banks nearly $25 billion, German banks a little over $20 billion and Belgian banks over $15 billion, according to figures by the Bank of International Settlements and ING estimates.
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Earlier on Friday, controversial Prime Minister Viktor Orban said both his government and the central bank want a fast deal with the International Monetary Fund.

The IMF, the EU and the ECB have criticized the Hungarian government for wanting to curb the central bank’s independence.

Since coming to power in 2010, Orban’s government took over private pension funds, set a fixed exchange rate for loans in foreign currency taken during the boom years before 2008 — forcing banks to take the losses due to the national currency’s depreciation — and imposed the biggest tax in Europe on banks, sparking investors’ protests.

Fitch said the government’s policies, popular with voters but which have prompted foreign investors’ fury and have attracted international criticism, were part of the reason for the downgrade.

Officials at OSFI are taking steps to help their future employers retain hegemony over Canadian financial markets:

OSFI strongly believes additional exemptions from the restrictions on proprietary trading should be given to foreign government securities, at least for banking groups whose parent bank is located outside of the US. Many foreign banks play important market-making roles in the trading of government securities in their home jurisdictions. They also actively rely on government securities of their home jurisdiction to efficiently manage their liquidity and funding requirements at a global enterprise-wide level; a practice that will be further reinforced in the future by new bank liquidity requirements that have been proposed by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. Thus, OSFI believes a failure to include these additional exemptions at least for banking entities whose parent bank is located outside of the US would undermine the liquidity of government debt markets outside of the US and could significantly impede the ability of foreign banks to efficiently manage their liquidity and funding requirements at an enterprise-wide level.

It was another very good day for the Canadian preferred share market, with PerpetualDiscounts winning 39bp (won’t be too many of the them left soon!), FixedResets up 10bp and DeemedRetractibles gaining 26bp. I remain on tenterhooks waiting to see whether the Bozo Spread (Current Yield PerpetualDiscounts less Current Yield FixedResets) will go negative! There was good volatility, with insurance DeemedRetractibles doing quite well. Volume remains low after the holiday break.

They don’t issue preferreds, but this is interesting anyway – S&P downgraded Sears by two notches:

• The decline in operating performance at U.S. retailer Sears accelerated in 2011, and we expect operating performance to remain pressured in 2012, potentially resulting in negative EBITDA.
• Sears’ liquidity sources will narrow, given the negative EBITDA we expect and the need to fund operating losses, capital spending, and pension contributions.
• We are lowering our corporate credit rating on the company to ‘CCC+’ from ‘B’ and the short-term and commercial paper ratings for Sears Roebuck Acceptance to ‘C’ from ‘B-2’.
• The negative outlook reflects our expectation that Sears’ liquidity could diminish in 2013.

This means that Eddy Lampert could be in trouble:

Edward Lampert’s hedge fund cut its stake in AutoZone (AZO) Inc. late last month to meet client redemptions amid a series of setbacks at Sears Holdings Corp. (SHLD), one of its biggest and highest-profile investments.

ESL Investments Inc., the firm run by Lampert, distributed about $1.02 billion worth of AutoZone stock to investors in connection with the closing of one investment partnership and the restructuring of another, according to a regulatory filing yesterday. The Greenwich, Connecticut-based firm also used $351.4 million of shares in AutoZone and AutoNation Inc. (AN) as payment in kind to meet year-end redemptions from its main fund, ESL Partners LP, the filing showed.

Lampert has been selling AutoZone and AutoNation shares while holding onto his entire stake in Sears, a strategy that could leave his main hedge fund further concentrated in the Hoffman Estates, Illinois-based retailer. AutoZone rose 19 percent last year and AutoNation shares gained 31 percent, while Sears shares plummeted 56 percent.

It was a good day for the Canadian preferred share market, with PerpetualDiscounts winning 29bp, FixedResets up 7bp and DeemedRetractibles gaining 22bp. For the second successive day there was a lengthy list of issues gaining more than 1% – with SLF issues notable for their presence among the better performers, while Floaters continued to signal retail expectations of inflationary times ahead. Volume remained significantly below average, but it is recovering.

Have we seen this movie before? Esoteric assets are being securitized in volume:

Sales of bonds backed by everything from timeshare rentals to shipping containers to entertainment royalties are poised to rise this year as investors seek to boost returns with interest rates at about record lows.

So-called esoteric asset-backed securities issuance may soar 12.9 percent to $35 billion, compared with debt linked to more traditional collateral such as auto and credit-card loans, which will grow 8.75 percent to $87 billion, according to a forecast from Credit Suisse Group AG.
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Investors willing to hold BBB rated bonds backed by franchise royalty fees of the Sonic Corp. (SONC) fast- food chain may receive as much as 2 percentage points more annually than similarly rated securities tied to auto loans, according to Barclays Capital’s Cory Wishengrad in New York.
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Cronos Containers Ltd. boosted the size of its November offering of bonds tied to shipping container lease payments by $50 million to $200 million, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. An A rated $170 million portion maturing in five years priced to yield 5 percent.

It was quite a good day for the Canadian preferred share market, with PerpetualDiscounts – what are left of them! – winning 53bp, FixedResets up 9bp and DeemedRetractibles gaining 19bp. Floating Rate issues also appear to be celebrating the new year. Good volatility – all winners! Volume was quite low, but better than the comatose levels of the last week.

PerpetualDiscounts now yield 5.08%, equivalent to 6.60% interest at the standard conversion factor of 1.4x. 1.3x. Long corporates now yield about 4.65%, so the pre-tax interest-equivalent spread (also called the Seniority Spread) is now about 195bp, significantly narrower than the 205bp reported December 30.

Nothing happened today.

It was a mixed day for the Canadian preferred share market, with PerpetualDiscounts roaring ahead 34bp, while FixedResets were down 4bp and DeemedRetractibles gained 8bp. Volatility was quite good, with Floaters doing particularly well. Volume continued to be abyssmally low.