PrefBlog

There has been a lot of yammering about income inequality in the past few years, as I mentioned on March 15. I’ve found some more source data:

In the next calculation, the world Gini index is recalculated by weighting countries by their population size. This means that countries with large populations have a larger impact on the Gini index than do countries with smaller populations. The population-weighted Gini index was calculated by Branko Milanovic and published in his book Worlds Apart: Measuring International and Global Inequality.13 The chart below compares the population-weighted Gini index (red line) with the unweighted Gini index shown in the previous chart (black line).

This weighted world Gini index declines almost consistently from 1962 onward. This is mainly due to the phenomenal economic growth in China and India relative to richer countries. Because China and India together account for over one-third of the world’s population, these two countries have a very strong impact on the population-weighted Gini results. But if China and India are removed from the calculation, the population-weighted Gini index trends upward after 1982 (as does the unweighted Gini index), meaning that overall income inequality is increasing in the rest of the world.

There’s a great graph, but it’s Flash (Wow! Way cool!), so go look for yourself. I like the last sentence from the quoted verbiage – ‘if we remove enough data, we can prove our point!’

It was a mixed day for the Canadian preferred share market, with PerpetualPremiums up 15bp, FixedResets down 9bp and DeemedRetractibles gaining 8bp. Volatility was average. Volume was low.

Hurray for Rick Waugh!

“I understand why the finance minister is concerned about the Canadian economy, but I just philosophically don’t think” government should be setting product pricing, Waugh said yesterday in an interview in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where the bank held its annual shareholders meeting. “Despite the difficulties of central banks to use interest rates, the alternative of trying to manage specific products or prices, to me, is fraught with difficulty.”

The article did not address Mr. Waugh’s views on auctioning off CMHC mortgage insurance, rather than allocating it from an enormous supply at a cheap price.

Toron Investment Management has hooked up with AMI Partners:

Toron Investment Management and AMI Partners have agreed to combine to create a pre-eminent, privately-owned Canadian investment management firm with unique expertise and top-tier track records in global and domestic investing. The firm, once unified, will serve clients who have entrusted more than $3.5 billion of assets in Canadian and global mandates.

The combined firm will operate as Toron Asset Management International (Toron AMI), will be based in Toronto, and will continue to serve clients in Canada and abroad. Toron AMI’s professionals will be shareholders and the firm will operate as a partnership.

Founded more than 50 years ago, AMI specializes in Canadian equity, fixed-income and balanced mandates for institutional clients. Toron Investment Management began operating 25 years ago as a risk management consultancy; for the past 15 years it has focused on global investment management, serving a growing client base of private clients and select institutions.

Today’s report will be delayed. Why? I’ll tell you why! Later.

Update, 2013-4-12

Nothing happened today.

It was a mixed day on the Canadian preferred share market, with PerpetualPremiums gaining 7bp, FixedResets off 2bp and DeemedRetractibles up 13bp. Volatility was minimal. Volume was average.

The times, they are a changin’:

Primary dealers, the select group of banks and brokers that have held a seat at the center of the U.S. government debt market since 1960, are losing influence.

More than 20 percent of the $538 billion of Treasury notes auctioned this year have been awarded to bidders who bypassed the dealers by using a website to place their orders, according to U.S. Treasury Department data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s almost double the 2011 level and up from 5.6 percent in 2009.

In the same way technology eroded the middleman role once played by travel agents and stock-market specialists, increased use of the direct-bidding system threatens government-bond traders at firms ranging from Bank of America Corp. to UBS AG. (UBSN). It also has eaten into profits from a business that’s among the least affected by the regulatory changes and new capital requirements reshaping the industry.
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Traders at primary dealers have complained to the Treasury and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York about direct bidding, which they say is reducing their profitability, according to seven government-bond traders who requested anonymity because they weren’t authorized to comment publicly. Their job is becoming more frustrating, and sometimes money-losing, now that they’re competing in auctions against anonymous investors who can show up at any time and at any price, the traders said.

I’m sure we’ll all shed a tear for the poor traders who are finding that being the guy who answers a particular telephone isn’t as good a job as it used to be.

Here in Canada, the bond business is pretty good:

Royal Bank of Canada (RY), the top underwriter of Canadian corporate bonds for the past decade, is predicting record issuance this year led by a surge in high- yield debt.

Bond sales in Canadian dollars will reach C$95 billion ($94 billion) this year, on pace to shatter 2006’s record C$93 billion, said Altaf Nanji, senior credit-research analyst at RBC Capital Markets in Toronto. Issuance in the first quarter, typically the busiest of the year, was C$30 billion, according to RBC data. The firm’s forecast in December was for C$92 billion, including about C$5 billion of junk sales.

“The revised forecast puts issuance on pace to surpass our 2006 record year, based on the health of the high-yield sector, an increase in mortgage securitization and a more-active-than- expected first quarter for Maple issuance,” Nanji said in a phone interview.

Investors are snapping up the riskiest debt to meet annual return targets as central banks hold down borrowing costs to stave off recession. Sun Life Financial Inc. (SLF) altered its investment mandate to add high-yield bonds to the C$115 billion of assets it oversees to offset falling interest rates.

Issuance of high-yield bonds climbed 32 percent to C$1.14 billion in the first quarter, compared with an increase of 11 percent to $109 billion in the U.S. speculative market, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. RBC expects the junk market to grow to C$35 billion of bonds outstanding by 2016, up from C$11 billion currently.

The Bank of Canada has released a paper by Carlos de Resende, Ali Dib, René Lalonde and Nikita Perevalov titled Countercyclical Bank Capital Requirement and Optimized Monetary Policy Rules:

Using BoC-GEM-Fin, a large-scale DSGE model with real, nominal and financial frictions featuring a banking sector, we explore the macroeconomic implications of various types of countercyclical bank capital regulations. Results suggest that countercyclical capital requirements have a significant stabilizing effect on key macroeconomic variables, but mostly after financial shocks. Moreover, the bank capital regulatory policy and monetary policy interact, and this interaction is contingent on the type of shocks that drive the economic cycle.

Finally, we analyze loss functions based on macroeconomic and financial variables to arrive at an optimal countercyclical regulatory policy in a class of simple implementable Taylor-type rules. Compared to bank capital regulatory policy, monetary policy is able to stabilize the economy more efficiently after real shocks. On the other hand, financial shocks require the regulator to be more aggressive in loosening/tightening capital requirements for banks, even as monetary policy works to counter the deviations of inflation from the target.

It was a mixed day for the Canadian preferred share market, with PerpetualPremiums up 14bp, FixedResets down 14bp and DeemedRetractibles off 4bp. Volatility was muted. Volume was very low.

The US jobs number was disappointing:

Payrolls grew by 88,000 workers last month, the smallest in nine months, after a revised 268,000 gain in February that was higher than first estimated, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. The median forecast of 87 economists surveyed by Bloomberg projected an advance of 190,000. The jobless rate fell to 7.6 percent from 7.7 percent.

The US is looking serious on Too-Big-To-Fail:

The largest U.S. banks, including JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) and Bank of America Corp., would have to hold capital in excess of Basel III standards under a proposal being drafted by Senate Democrats and Republicans to curb the size of too-big-to-fail banks.

The current draft of the legislation would require U.S. regulators to replace Basel III requirements with a higher capital standard: 10 percent for all banks and an additional surcharge of 5 percent for institutions with more than $400 billion in assets. Senators Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Ohio, and David Vitter, a Republican from Louisiana, have said they intend to introduce the bill this month.

Some US politicians are trying to ban hedging:

State Senator Mike Folmer, a Republican, in February introduced a bill that would bar publicly funded entities from engaging in the derivatives, which can be used to protect against swings in interest rates. The ban would deny Philadelphia, which had entered into $3.5 billion of swaps, access to a useful tool, said Rob Dubow, finance director of the fifth-most populous U.S. city.
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The Pennsylvania State Association of Boroughs supports a ban on swaps, said Christopher Cap, executive vice president. Elam Herr, assistant executive director of Pennsylvania State Association of Township Supervisors, said it may back Folmer’s bill.

The best known example is Oakland’s attempt to effectively default on what was effectively a loan:

Between debating the location of a proposed dog park and discussing taxi permit fees one night last month, the city council in Oakland, California, turned to severing ties with Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS)

The vote for the city administrator to begin the process of firing the fifth-biggest U.S. bank by assets came during an eight-hour meeting Dec. 18. It culminated months of efforts by the city to exit a 1998 interest-rate swap without paying a $14.8 million termination fee. Goldman, which underwrote $83 million of Oakland debt last year, has denied the request.
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Oakland entered into a so-called synthetic fixed-rate swap with the bank in 1998. It issued bonds to help finance pension obligations and used variable-rate instead of fixed-rate securities, according to reports filed with the city council.

The city was lured by the prospect of upfront cash, said Zennie Abraham, economic adviser to then-Mayor Elihu Harris. California voters had just approved Proposition 218, which limited cities’ ability to raise taxes, said Abraham.

“A lot of the city staff got enamored with the city getting a huge check,” Abraham said. “That was dangled in our face.”

The city realized a $15 million windfall from entering the contract. Oakland agreed to pay a fixed 5.6775 percent until 2021, while the bank was on the hook for a variable rate equal to the Bond Markets Association Index — 3.09 percent at the time the bonds were issued in 1998.

Nothing wrong with swaps or any other derivatives. But when they’re used to cover up borrowing, a la Greece … well, somebody should get fired.

The feds are continuing to explain bail-in bonds:

While the term “bail-in” has been used in both cases, Canadian officials are now scrambling to distance their plan from any that would use consumer deposits for capital. Amid questions about the plan, a spokeswoman for Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said in a statement that no consumer bank deposits – of any kind – would be drawn upon in the Canadian bail-in scenario.

“The ‘bail-in’ scenario described in the budget has nothing to do with consumer deposits and they are not part of the ‘bail-in’ regime,” Department of Finance spokeswoman Kathleen Perchaluk said.
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Sources familiar with the plans say the Canadian bail-in scenario will rely on a specific class of new investments: subordinate bonds and deposit notes. The latter acts similar to bonds, where a large depositor such as an institutional investor or corporate customer with several hundred thousand dollars or more to deposit, buys a deposit note in order to get a slightly better return. It is similar to a contractual arrangement.

Analysts, however, say it would take extreme circumstances for the concept of a bail-in to ever come into play.

These deposit notes and bonds are not financial products available to the average investor or depositor, and do not include funds held in consumer deposits.

This may turn out very well for the preferred share market; it is impossible for the bar to be set any lower for deposit notes and bonds than it is for preferred shares, so what’s the difference? I mean really? An announcement of intention from OSFI that it will seek to convert preferred shares first in the event of non-viability?

This simply shows up the moronic nature of OSFI’s decision to go for a “low trigger” on preferred share contingent capital conversion … if they were high trigger, then the bonds could be low trigger (preferably lower trigger, rather than non-viability trigger) and then the bonds would be clearly senior and there would be a clear hierarchy. However, this would lower the importance of OSFI’s discretion when the next crisis occurs, and hence lower the importance of OSFI officialdom.

I have long argued, for instance, that all contingent capital should convert upon the common stock price breaching a certain level (taken as a VWAP over a period of time). For instance, let us assume RY’s common share price is $50. Then preferred shares should convert when the common trades below $25, at a conversion price of $25. The bonds could convert with a trigger price = conversion price = $10-15. This would be a much better system than the current mess.

With excellent timing, DBRS Requests Comments on Rating Subordinated, Hybrids and Preferred Bank Capital Securities:

DBRS is requesting comments on a proposed methodology released today that would be used in the rating of capital securities issued by banks that are either subordinated or that have unique convertibility terms (including contingent capital features). Market participants are asked to submit comments on the proposal to DBRS_Bank_Methodology_Comments@DBRS.com on or before May 10, 2013. Following the review and evaluation of all submissions, DBRS will publish a final version of this methodology.

Note that the proposed criteria as titled represents a merger of three outstanding DBRS banking criteria: (i) Rating Bank Subordinated Debt & Hybrid Instruments with Discretionary Payments; (ii) Rating Bank Subordinated Debt & Hybrid Instruments with Contingent Risks; and (iii) Rating Bank Preferred Shares & Equivalent Hybrids.

While we are open to any comments, we draw attention to three major areas, two of which are written as changes in the proposed document and one consideration for change, which has not been included in the document at this time:

(1) Present criteria dictate that bank preferred shares are typically rated three to five notches below the issuer’s intrinsic assessment. Based on further assessing the impact of notching versus POD (“probability of default”) levels, the request for comment document changes this to a standard three notches. We are also asking for comments on whether DBRS should retain the flexibility to have certain bank preferred ratings notched up by one notch versus the standard notching where there are unique positive characteristics for individual banks, or if this ability should be removed. The wording in the proposed criteria as released still provides this ability.

(2) A second change relates to the notching process that DBRS would use for contingent capital instruments. The proposed criteria within this April 5th, 2013 document provide more detail relative to the current DBRS criteria.

(3) As is the case with the present criteria, the request for comment document continues to present that normal subordinate debt instruments issued by banks that are defined by DBRS as systemically important would generally receive the identical notching benefit of typically a one-notch uplift due to external / government support that is given to deposits and senior unsecured debt. In recent times, there appears to be growing skepticism regarding governments’ willingness to support subordinated debt when dealing with systemically important banks. Our final decision on this issue could maintain the status quo; or it could result in all subordinate debt being notched from the intrinsic assessment level; or there could be a combination of the above based on the relevant legal framework, resolution schemes, and government policies for each country and banks involved.

BBO.PR.A was placed on Review-Negative by DBRS last September; the rating has now been affirmed at Pfd-2(low) and the Review removed:

DBRS has today confirmed the rating of the Class A, Preferred Shares (the Preferred Shares) issued by Big Bank Big Oil Split Corp. (the Company) at Pfd-2 (low) and has removed the rating from Under Review with Negative Implications.
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On September 6, 2012, DBRS placed the rating of the Preferred Shares Under Review with Negative Implications, primarily due to the drop in downside protection below required levels in the prior months. However, since then, downside protection has recovered and stabilized, fluctuating between 49% and 51%, and the dividend coverage ratio has improved. As a result, the Preferred Shares have been confirmed at Pfd-2 (low) and removed from Under Review with Negative Implications.

Complicating matters is the fact that BBO reports its NAV per Capital Share, rather than per Unit, which is made clear by their January Fact Sheet.

It was a mixed day for the Canadian preferred share market, with PerpetualPremiums off 3bp, FixedResets down 9bp and DeemedRetractibles gaining 2bp. Volatility was minimal. Volume was above average.

Enbridge Inc., proud issuer of many preferred shares, is issuing equity:

Enbridge Inc. (TSX:ENB) (NYSE:ENB) today announced that it has entered into an agreement with RBC Capital Markets and Scotiabank (“the Underwriters”) to sell 10,850,000 treasury common shares, on a bought deal basis, at $46.11 per common share for distribution to the public. Closing of the offering is expected on or about April 16, 2013.

Enbridge has granted the Underwriters an option, exercisable at any time up to 48 hours prior to closing of the offering, to purchase up to an additional 2,170,000 treasury common shares at $46.11 per common share.

“Since the long-term funding plan discussed at our investor conference last fall we have achieved greater than expected progress in the development of attractive new growth opportunities, including those already announced and those yet to be” said J. Richard Bird, Enbridge Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer & Corporate Development. “An update to our funding plan now indicates an incremental equity requirement over the 2012-2016 period. The common share offering today continues our practice of maintaining a very manageable forward funding requirement. After the common share offering, and our recent preferred share issue, our net forward equity requirement stands at $1.9 billion through 2016, which we expect to accommodate through additional preferred share issues and asset monetizations. The additional growth investments will contribute to sustaining Enbridge’s industry-leading EPS growth rate through 2016 and well beyond.”

Today’s prize for precious handwringing goes to The Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment:

Thousands of financial sector workers risk being frozen out of the industry unless they pass mandatory tests measuring their personal ethics and integrity.

The Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment (CISI), a London-based professional body for individuals working, or seeking careers in wealth management and capital markets around the world, wants all of its members to undergo integrity screening or face losing their membership, as it battles to restore public faith in finance.

Until now, only individuals offering financial advice had to take such a test as a condition of their CISI status and to comply with U.K. rules on how investment funds are sold to savers.

Bankers working in areas like corporate finance and mergers and acquisitions, and traders in bonds, shares and derivatives have no such regulatory requirements imposed upon them.

But CISI said on Tuesday that systematic checks on the ethics and integrity of workers across the entire financial services industry were long overdue.

Sadly, it is impossible to determine integrity through a test. Ten percent of any population will cheat as soon as they think they can get away with it. Ten percent will not cheat, no matter what happens. The rest might cheat, given the right combination and severity of circumstances. And you cannot tell in advance who is who. The instigators of this paperwork exercise recognize this, but are doing it anyway:

Martin Wheatley, head of Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority, welcomed the CISI initiative but skeptics said the test would only prove that bankers know how they should act, not whether they actually would apply those ethics on a daily basis.

“No test can guarantee how someone will behave subsequently. But our aim is to make people aware of how they should behave when faced with difficult situations,” Mr. Culhane said.

There was a wide disparity among type in the Canadian preferred share market today, with PerpetualPremiums up 7bp, FixedResets winning 20bp and DeemedRetractibles flat. Volatility was on the low side, but comprised entirely of winning FixedResets. Volume was high and all top-six places were held by FixedResets.