April 13, 2010

Citigroup’s liquidity guarantees are attracting scrutiny:

Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission investigators may conclude a primary cause of Citigroup’s 2008 bailout was the use of “liquidity puts” by traders to bolster sales, Chairman Phil Angelides said in an interview yesterday. Those puts allowed customers to sell debt securities back to the bank at face value if credit markets froze, something that Citigroup’s traders bet would never happen, according to Angelides.

To raise money to buy the assets, Citigroup sold commercial paper, with the assets pledged as collateral. Commercial paper is a type of debt that matures in less than a year and was popular with money-market funds and corporate treasurers who want to invest their surplus cash in readily redeemable funds while earning higher yields.

Liquidity puts were added to “facilitate” the sales of the commercial paper, [Citigroup CDO boss Nestor] Dominguez said; investors could “put back” the commercial paper to Citigroup if the market went cold. Dominguez described this as a “significant widening in credit spreads or a temporary inability to issue commercial paper.” Widening credit spreads, or the gap between a bond’s yield and benchmark rates, indicate slackening investor demand.

Citigroup used the liquidity puts partly because they required less capital support than backup credit lines that bank’s typically offer, Georgiou said.

The liquidity puts were subject to a 0.8 percent capital charge, [commission member Byron] Georgiou said. Put another way, the bank had to set aside $1 of capital for every $125 of commercial paper. That compares with Citigroup’s overall ratio of $1 for every $14.50 of loans, securities and other investments as of Dec. 31.

The International Monetary Fund has released the April 2010 Global Financial Stability Report. I haven’t had a chance to do much besides skim it, but the big news is that they’re recommending capital charges on “systemically important” banks based on regulatory fiat, rather than any kind of formula:

Regulators may find it necessary to weigh “direct preemptive measures,” including constraining the size of certain activities to limit the emergence of “systemically important” firms, the Washington-based IMF said today in its bi-annual Global Financial Stability Report.

The report precedes an April 23 meeting of the Group of 20 nations in Washington, where the IMF plans to detail for finance chiefs ways that financial firms may help pay for the costs of bailouts. Since the start of the credit crisis, governments and central banks have spent more than $11 trillion to support the financial industry, according to the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The capital surcharge would be “a buffer” designed to increase “the resiliency of the institution to sustain different shocks,” Juan Sole, one of the report’s authors, told reporters in Washington today.

Political momentum to overhaul financial regulations in some countries may be weakening as economic growth returns, IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said in an interview in Kenya last month.

Parts of the financial industry have gone “back to practices of risk taking, which is probably not the most appropriate to have a stable financial system at the global level,” he said.

Now, more than ever, it is important for large banks to offer cushy jobs to ex-regulators!

The rebound in the market continued today on heavy volume, with PerpetualDiscounts up 26bp while FixedResets lost 4bp … taking the yield on the latter index within striking distance of 4%!

HIMIPref™ Preferred Indices
These values reflect the December 2008 revision of the HIMIPref™ Indices

Values are provisional and are finalized monthly
Index Mean
Current
Yield
(at bid)
Median
YTW
Median
Average
Trading
Value
Median
Mod Dur
(YTW)
Issues Day’s Perf. Index Value
Ratchet 2.60 % 2.71 % 55,414 20.88 1 -0.2764 % 2,122.8
FixedFloater 4.94 % 3.01 % 47,480 20.39 1 0.3238 % 3,237.9
Floater 1.90 % 1.65 % 42,088 23.46 4 0.3755 % 2,427.3
OpRet 4.88 % 3.48 % 107,376 0.29 10 -0.0350 % 2,313.7
SplitShare 6.34 % -1.27 % 136,202 0.08 2 0.0438 % 2,151.7
Interest-Bearing 0.00 % 0.00 % 0 0.00 0 -0.0350 % 2,115.6
Perpetual-Premium 5.82 % 3.86 % 34,650 0.62 2 0.4654 % 1,853.8
Perpetual-Discount 6.14 % 6.20 % 197,668 13.65 76 0.2626 % 1,733.0
FixedReset 5.43 % 3.93 % 479,541 3.66 44 -0.0373 % 2,173.7
Performance Highlights
Issue Index Change Notes
MFC.PR.C Perpetual-Discount -2.22 % YTW SCENARIO
Maturity Type : Limit Maturity
Maturity Date : 2040-04-13
Maturity Price : 18.09
Evaluated at bid price : 18.09
Bid-YTW : 6.30 %
GWO.PR.I Perpetual-Discount -1.03 % YTW SCENARIO
Maturity Type : Limit Maturity
Maturity Date : 2040-04-13
Maturity Price : 18.21
Evaluated at bid price : 18.21
Bid-YTW : 6.24 %
RY.PR.B Perpetual-Discount 1.00 % YTW SCENARIO
Maturity Type : Limit Maturity
Maturity Date : 2040-04-13
Maturity Price : 20.11
Evaluated at bid price : 20.11
Bid-YTW : 5.94 %
SLF.PR.D Perpetual-Discount 1.12 % YTW SCENARIO
Maturity Type : Limit Maturity
Maturity Date : 2040-04-13
Maturity Price : 18.01
Evaluated at bid price : 18.01
Bid-YTW : 6.24 %
POW.PR.B Perpetual-Discount 1.67 % YTW SCENARIO
Maturity Type : Limit Maturity
Maturity Date : 2040-04-13
Maturity Price : 21.35
Evaluated at bid price : 21.35
Bid-YTW : 6.31 %
POW.PR.D Perpetual-Discount 1.83 % YTW SCENARIO
Maturity Type : Limit Maturity
Maturity Date : 2040-04-13
Maturity Price : 20.07
Evaluated at bid price : 20.07
Bid-YTW : 6.27 %
Volume Highlights
Issue Index Shares
Traded
Notes
BNS.PR.Y FixedReset 92,850 Recent new issue.
YTW SCENARIO
Maturity Type : Limit Maturity
Maturity Date : 2040-04-13
Maturity Price : 24.35
Evaluated at bid price : 24.40
Bid-YTW : 3.95 %
RY.PR.R FixedReset 70,460 National crossed 55,000 at 27.61.
YTW SCENARIO
Maturity Type : Call
Maturity Date : 2014-03-26
Maturity Price : 25.00
Evaluated at bid price : 27.57
Bid-YTW : 3.75 %
BNS.PR.T FixedReset 58,045 National crossed 50,000 at 27.44.
YTW SCENARIO
Maturity Type : Call
Maturity Date : 2014-05-25
Maturity Price : 25.00
Evaluated at bid price : 27.37
Bid-YTW : 3.75 %
TD.PR.G FixedReset 53,818 RBC crossed 13,700 at 27.41; Nesbitt bought 10,000 from anonymous at 27.40.
YTW SCENARIO
Maturity Type : Call
Maturity Date : 2014-05-30
Maturity Price : 25.00
Evaluated at bid price : 27.31
Bid-YTW : 3.82 %
SLF.PR.D Perpetual-Discount 44,253 RBC bought 10,000 from National at 18.20.
YTW SCENARIO
Maturity Type : Limit Maturity
Maturity Date : 2040-04-13
Maturity Price : 18.01
Evaluated at bid price : 18.01
Bid-YTW : 6.24 %
MFC.PR.E FixedReset 44,214 National crossed 25,000 at 26.79.
YTW SCENARIO
Maturity Type : Call
Maturity Date : 2014-10-19
Maturity Price : 25.00
Evaluated at bid price : 26.68
Bid-YTW : 4.10 %
There were 61 other index-included issues trading in excess of 10,000 shares.

One Response to “April 13, 2010”

  1. […] ignore concentration risk and things like Citigroup’s “liquidity puts” (discussed April 13 and risk-weighted liquidity guarantees at a low value; ignored concentration risk, and allowed […]

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