Showing posts with label Nama discounts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nama discounts. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Economics 31/03/2010: An expensive joke called Nama

I must confess, the last thing I expected in yesterday's quadruple whammy of one Ministerial speech, one Nama document release, a Central Bank statement and the Financial Regulator's decision was a joke. But there it was. For all to see, for few to notice.

Armed with a law degree-backed mastery of logic, Minister Lenihan has issued a statement that he will be requiring Irish Bankers Federation to run courses for the benefit of our bankers on how to lend money to projects other than property. That statement, coming from the Minister after he announced that the Anglo will be provided with up to €18.3 billion in taxpayers cash, and the rest of our banks will swallow billions more was worthy of a comedian. In an instant - we had a Minister for Finance throwing money at the banks which, by his own admission, have no idea of how to lend.

Anything else had to take a back seat to this farce. And it almost did. If not for another pearl of bizarre twist in the Nama saga. Recall that this Government has promised the world an arms-length entity to control and legally own Nama - the Special Purpose Vehicle arrangement which, in order to keep Nama debts out of the national debt accounts was supposed to be majority (51%) owned by external investors.

At the time of the original announcement of this arrangement I publicly stated that there was absolutely nothing in the Nama legislation precluding parties with direct interest in Nama from investing in this SPV. And boy, clearly unaware of such pithy things like conflict of interest, Nama announced that its majority owners will be:
  • Irish Life Assurance (a part of the IL&P that has been at the centre of the Anglo deposits controversy and one of the most leveraged banks in the nation),
  • New Ireland (an insurance branch of BofI), and
  • AIB Investment Managers.
In other words, the very institutions that will be benefiting from Nama's taxpayers riches will also own Nama and will comprise SPV board. They couldn't have given a share to Seannie Fitz and Mick Fingleton, could they?

Having a good laugh - even at the cost of tens of billions to us, the ordinary folks - is a great end for a day in the Namacrats land. So much for responsible and vigilant policies of the Government.


Now to the beef: Nama release figures.

In its note on the first tranche of loans transferred, Nama provides a handy (although predictably vague) description of the loans the taxpayers are buying as of March 30, 2010. Table below summarizes what information we do have:

Let us take a further look at the data provided in the official release and the accompanying slide deck.
Applying more realistic valuations on the loans transferred against the average Nama discount, while allowing for 11% assumed LTEV uplift (Nama own figure), net of 2% risk margin - the last column in the above table shows the amounts that should have been paid for these assets were their valuations carried out on the base of March 30, 2010 instead of November 30, 2009 and were the discounts applied reflective of realistic current markets conditions.

Thus, in the entire first tranche of loans, Nama has managed to overpay (or shall we say squander away) between €1.2 and €3.1 billion - a range of overpayment consistent with 14-37% loss under the plausibly optimistic assumptions. Returning this loss across the entire Nama book of business and adding associated expected costs of the undertaking implies a taxpayer loss of €9.6-25.3 billion from Nama operations.


In Nama statement, Brendan McDonagh, Chief Executive of NAMA said: “Our sole focus at NAMA is to bring proper and disciplined management to these loans and borrowers with the aim of achieving the best possible return and to protect the interests of the taxpayer. ...NAMA is willing to engage with an open mind to our acquired clients ...”

Pretty amazing, folks - Nama CEO clearly sees the borrowers as his 'clients', while claiming that his organization objective is to benefit the taxpayers. Would Mr McDonagh be so kind as to explain the difference? Is Nama going to serve the 'clients' or is it going to protect the taxpayers? The two objectives can easily find themselves at odds - the fact Mr McDonagh is seemingly unaware of.

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Economics 02/03/2010: AIB 2009 results

AIB's bad fortunes:
  • Pre-tax loss of €2.656bn for 2009;
  • €5.35bn in bad loans provisions - 4.05% of customer loans base
  • ROI operations losses of €3.5bn
  • Total criticised loans up to €38.2bn (24.9% of customer loans base), compared to €15.5bn (11.7%) at the end of 2008
  • Criticised loans increase - 23% outside ROI, 77% within ROI
  • Mortgages 91+days overdue are at 1.96% (December 2008 0.7%) and this does not account for re-negotiated mortgages
  • Post-Nama, expects ROI loans to fall to €58bn (55% of the total loans held), composed of €27bn mortgages, €6bn in personal loans, €12.8bn of property loans, €12.6bn other loans
But the real beefy stuff is on pages 111 and 15 of the report (here). Hold on to your seats, folks - from the realistic folks who brought you a dividend in 2008 (as the Titanic was gliding along the iceberg's first bump):

Page 11: Loans and receivables held for sale to Nama €23.195bn, with Provisions at €4.165bn
implying an 17.96% net discount on loans transferred to Nama (the second table below).

Aha, not 25%, or 30% or 35%, but 18%. And as far as those 'Good Loans' that Minister Lenihan wanted to buy go? That's categories 1-3 loans above, or a whooping total of €21mln. Impressive risk hedging by Nama is expected. Oh, don't take my word for this - here is how the Nama portfolio from AIB will look like:
So wait a second, folks, AIB will dump 63% of their impaired loans into Nama, but will provision for a haircut of 18% on these? Their own debt is now being settled at 50 cents on the Euro with private bondholders, while the Irish taxpayer is expected to settle at 18 cents?!

And have a laugh - page 15: ROI Nama-bound loans provision is 16.6%, UK Nama-bound loans are 5.1% and overall impairment charge due to Nama (remember, this accounts for risk-weighting changes) of 14.54% (Table at the bottom of page 15).

It's a free lunch -Frank Fahey-style - except for the bank!