19/7/2012: Minister Noonan's 'valuations' & NTMA's latest scheme

An interesting - and potentially revealing - contribution from Minister Noonan on the prospective ESM involvement in purchasing Irish banks assets held by the Government - see full link here (H/T to Owen Callan of Danske Markets).

Here are some interesting bits (from my pov - note, emphasis in quotes is mine):

"...if Europe's new rescue fund takes over the government's stakes in its banks, it would need to do so at prices significantly above their current low valuations."

So what should be the prices benchmark to be paid by ESM for Irish banks?

We know what Minister Noonan thinks what they should not be:
"We wouldn't think we were being assisted or treated fairly if we were only offered the terms we could get from a willing hedge fund who wanted to purchase the stake the Irish government has in the banks," Noonan told a news conference"

Ok, a willing hedge fund is mentioned as a benchmark floor. What willing hedge fund? 1) Have there been approaches that set out some valuation? 2) Have these approaches involved sufficient depth of discussion to show the actual price the fund was willing to pay, other than the low-ball first bid? 3) Have these approaches been systematic or random?

Now, suppose there has been a series of approaches and the hedge funds' willing price is €X million. Suppose Minister Noonan insists on ESM paying a minimum price of €Y million that is above €X million, which means there is a positive premium to be paid by ESM.

What principle should guide this premium valuation? "The valuation will be an issue for negotiation but before we could agree, they would need to be significantly in advance of those figures," Noonan added, referring to figures showing that investments by the country's National Pension Reserve Fund (NPRF) in its top two banks were now worth 8.1 billion euros."

Is Minister Noonan seriously suggesting ESM should pay Irish Government more than €8.1 billion? Since NPRF valuations of the banks stakes are make-believe stuff with absolutely no proven testability in the actual markets, will ESM be buying into a loss then? Ex ante?!



Another interesting comment in the article cited above is the following one:

"The NTMA also confirmed plans to diversify its sources of funding later this year with its first sovereign issuance of annuity bonds to Irish-based pension funds and inflation-linked bonds also aimed at domestic investors.

Corrigan said it was not inconceivable that it could raise 3 to 5 billion euros over the next 18 months from the two new instruments.

"International investors don't owe us a living, they don't have to buy our paper, and if the local investors don't have the confidence to invest in the market and aren't seen to have that confidence, it's going to be very difficult to get international investors back," he said."

Which, of course is all reasonably fine but for two matters:

1. Domestic pension funds will be acting against normal practice and investing in low-rated (high risk) government securities within the very same economy in which they face future liabilities (reducing risk diversification). In other words, Irish insurance funds will have to be compelled to undertake such investment in violation of acceptable international standards. Have the Government now also taken over the pensions industry to add to their banking sector portfolio?
2. If foreign investors 'won't owe Irish Government a living' why should domestic investors owe Irish Government anything? By treating two investors differently rhetorically, does Mr Corrigan explicitly differentiate treatment of domestic investors from foreign investors? It appears to be exactly so because the products he references are not going to be offered to foreign investors. Which begs the third question:
3. Will NTMA create sub-category of seniority for Irish pension funds and 'domestic investors' to effectively load even more risk onto them compared to foreign investors? After all, he seems to suggest domestic investor owe him something that foreign investors don't?

17/7/2012: Euro area debt crisis timeline

One hell of an infographic via The Financialist here summarizing the time line for the euro area debt crisis.

17/7/2012: Fiscal Monitor Update - another chart

Here’s an interesting chart from the Fiscal Monitor update released by the IMF yesterday that is worth some attention on its own (see more analysis here).

Basically, this shows that in 2008-2010 period, Irish bonds valuations were not as much divorced from the immediate fiscal sustainability fundamentals as our politicos claimed. If anything, they were virtually in line with the fundamentals, pricing almost no longer-term structural underperformance of the economy.

This is not to say that we lack in the room for structural reforms, or that we were well on the way to delivering such reforms. Markets perception of Ireland even during the deeply crisis-ridden days of 2008-2010 seemed to have been much better than that of Portugal, Italy and Spain. Whether that was justifiable or not – is an entirely different question. But what is clear is that compared to other peripherals, our Government had no one else but itself to blame for our bonds spreads.

16/7/2012: Some charts to illustrate Italian 'disease'

An interesting set of charts on Italian public finances.

First, consider Primary Deficits:

Charts above clearly show that Italy has been running significant primary surpluses since at least 2000 and especially in 2007-2011 period. It is also expected to run strong surpluses in 2012-2017, according to IMF projections.

In fact, net of debt maintenance costs, Italy has outperformed Germany in the area of public deficits in every year other than 2008 and 2009:

Yet, Italy's gross government debt is running over 90% of GDP since 1989 and over 100% of GDP since 1992.

The problem for Italy is clearly on the side of interest payments on its debt:

Although these have moderated during the euro era, the cost is now once again rising.

Italy is but one example of debt overhang that presents long-term problems for the economy. Looking at the set of all advanced economies which experienced more than 5 years periods of debt to GDP ratio in excess of 90%, the chart below shows the relationship between growth rates in real GDP and debt:

Although the explanatory power of the relationship above is weak (ca 10% of variation), the negative relationship between debt to GDP ratio and real growth in GDP is traceable. In terms of averages:

Many caveats go along with the above numbers, but overall, two things are fairly clear: once reached, debt to GDP levels of 85-90% become hard to overcome for many economies, and once debt overhang becomes a problem, growth rates tend to falter.

17/6/2012: Services Value Index for Ireland - May 2012

Some good news for a change:


Per CSO: "The seasonally adjusted monthly services value index increased by 5.5% in May 2012 when compared with April 2012 and there was an annual increase of 8.0%." Some notable mom changes were:

• Information and Communication (+12.1%), 
• Business Services (+6.3%), 
• Wholesale and Retail Trade (+4.5%), 
• Other Services (+2.3%) 
• Accommodation and Food Service Activities (+0.3%) 
• Transportation and Storage showed a monthly decrease of 1.4%.

Some larger yoy moves were:

• Information and Communication (+20.0%), 
• Transportation and Storage (+8.7%),
• Wholesale and Retail Trade (+8.3%), 
• Other Services (+0.8%) 
• Business Services (+0.2%) 
• Accommodation and Food Service Activities showed an annual decrease of 2.5%.

16/7/2012: GFSR July 2012 - more alarm bells for European banks

IMF published Global Financial Stability Report update for June 2012, titled “Intense Financial Risks: Time for Action”

Per report: “Risks to financial stability have increased since the April 2012 Global Financial Stability Report (GFSR).

• Sovereign yields in southern Europe have risen sharply amid further erosion of the investor base.
• Elevated funding and market pressures pose risks of further cuts in peripheral euro area credit.
• The measures agreed at the recent European Union (EU) leaders’ summit provide significant steps to address the immediate crisis. Aside from supportive monetary and liquidity policies, the timely implementation of the recently agreed measures, together with further progress on banking and fiscal unions, must be a priority.
• Uncertainties about the asset quality of banks’ balance sheets must be resolved quickly, with capital injections and restructurings where needed.
•  Growth prospects in other advanced countries and emerging markets have also weakened, leaving them less able to deal with spillovers from the euro area crisis or to address their own home-grown fiscal and financial vulnerabilities. 
•  Uncertainties on the fiscal outlook and federal debt ceiling in the United States present a latent risk to financial stability."

Aside from the headlines, some interesting points from the report are:

• Market conditions worsened significantly in May and June, with measures of financial market stress reverting to, and in some cases surpassing, the levels seen during the worst period in November last year.  (see Figure 1)

•   The 3-year LTROs helped support demand for peripheral sovereign debt but that positive effect has waned. Private capital outflows continued to erode the foreign investor base in Italy and Spain (see Figures 3 and 4)

An interesting point on Euro area banking sector [emphasis mine]: “Notwithstanding the ample liquidity provided by the ECB’s refinancing operations, funding conditions for many peripheral banks and firms have deteriorated. Interbank conditions remain strained, with very limited activity in unsecured term markets, and liquidity hoarding by core euro area banks. Bank bond issuance has dropped off precipitously, with little investor demand even at higher interest rates.

“Banks in the euro area periphery have had to turn to the ECB to replace lost funding support, as cross-border wholesale funding dried up, and deposit outflows continue. The April 2012 GFSR noted that EU banks are under pressure to cut back assets, due to funding strains and market pressures, as well as to longer-term structural and regulatory drivers. The sharp reduction in bank balance sheets in the fourth quarter of 2011 continued, albeit at a slower pace, in the first quarter of 2012.

Growth in euro area private sector credit diverged significantly. While credit has contracted in Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland, it has remained more stable in some core countries.

Survey data on bank lending conditions show that credit supply remains tight, albeit less so than at the end of 2011, but that demand has also weakened more recently.

Deleveraging is also a concern for many peripheral corporations, given their historic dependence on bank funding and the risk that credit downgrades and diminished investor appetite could drive borrowing costs higher, even for high credit quality issuers.”

Now, here’s an interesting point not raised in the GFSR, but linked to the above observations: equities issuance accounts for roughly 55% of total corporate capital in US and EU. However, because the US corporates issue more bonds-backed debt than their EU counterparts, banks lending accounts for 40% of the European corporate funds raised, against 20% in the US. Which means that banks credit is about twice more important in Europe than in the US in terms of funding corporate capex. In fact, recent research from BCA clearly links US corporates ability to raise direct market funding by-passing banks to faster economic recovery in the US than in EU or Japan.

Add to this equation that European banks are worse capitalized than their US counterparts and that they are more leveraged than their US counterparts and you have a bleak prospect for the EU economy. BCA recently estimated that to bring Euro zone banks’ capital ratios to the levels comparable with the US average, the largest EU banks will have to raise some USD900 billion worth of new capital or cut their assets base by a whooping USD 9 trillion.

But wait, there’s more – you’ve heard about the latest report in the WSJ that Mario Draghi proposed to bail-in senior bondhodlers in Spanish banks? Much of the Irish commentary on this was positive, suggesting that Ireland is now in line for a retrospective deal from the ECB to recover some of the funds we paid to senior bondholders in Anglo and INBS. Setting aside the ‘wishful thinking’ nature of such comments – look at Draghi’s idea implications for EU economic activity. If bail-in does make it to the policy tool of European authorities, funding for the EA17 banks will only become more expensive in the medium and long term (risk premium on ‘bail-in probability’), which, in turn will mean even less credit for corporates, which will mean even less capex, and thus even lower prospect of recovery.

You know the story – pull one end of the carriage out of the quicksand pit, the other end sinks deeper… Let me quote BCA: “In Japan, credit contraction lasted well over nine years in the aftermath of the asset bubble bust. During that time, deflation prevailed and economic growth averaged a measly 0.5% annual pace.” Much of hope for Europe then? Not really. Recall that Japan had aggressive fiscal and monetary policies at its disposal plus booming global markets when it was undergoing credit bust. We, however, have psychotic monetary policy, no fiscal policy room and are running debt deflation cycle amidst global economic slowdown.

IMF is also on the note here: “Policymakers must resolve the uncertainty about bank asset quality and support the strengthening of banks’ balance sheets. Bank capital or funding structures in many institutions remain weak and insufficient to restore market confidence. In some cases, bank recapitalizations and restructurings need to be pursued, including through direct equity injections from the ESM into weak but viable banks…”