Opposing Views: should SSAs cut fees?

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Opposing Views: should SSAs cut fees?

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The debate over whether SSA borrowers should pay less in underwriting fees has split the market since the EU told banks it would pay less than the standard rate for its €800bn Next Gen EU bond programme. It is "the only topic" under discussion, one senior SSA banker told GlobalCapital this week. Is it fair to pay banks less when central banks underpin the market, or will issuers jeopardise their position long-term? Here, we present arguments for an against a shake-up of the way banks are paid.

Fees: a more modest proposal

The SSA syndication fee schedule is no longer fit for purpose, if it ever was. The EU has kick-started the debate, but the flaws in the business model go well beyond the issues the EU's fees grid has raised.

We can thank the EU for highlighting one flaw — fees that don't budge in proportion to the volume of issuance programmes make little sense. A discount for bulk business is simple common sense that few bankers would dispute. It is, after all, why they get to pay so little brokerage per volume than, say, a retail investor.

It is less obvious that the point at which a bulk discount kicks in should be between the $62bn KfW raised with syndications in 2020, and the roughly €150bn the EU will raise in 2022 but there is certainly a case to be made that the big borrowers in the SSA market should be eligible for similar treatment.

But that’s not the only flaw with fees. Some issuers point out that the existing structure means that banks are not incentivised to obtain the best cost of debt they can.

Banks will compete for mandates partly on the price they think the deal will clear at. But what happens once the mandate is won if no hard backstop all-in cost of funding has been offered? 

Since fees are proportional to the size of the deal, it is in bankers’ interests to advocate for a spread that is attractive to investors to ensure a large order book. This has two consequences. First, the banks’ underwriting capacities are very unlikely to be required. Second, they can talk the issuer into a larger deal based on the demand, and secure higher fees that way.

Of course, pitching cheap deals won’t win mandates in the first place, but the fact remains that fees that scale with deal size are not well designed to secure the best price for the issuer.

 

Fixed fees are an issue

Why have a fixed fee schedule at all? Market dynamics change, but for some reason, fees do not. Either the fee schedule was wrong for the conditions when it was set, or it is wrong now.

Few bankers will dispute the fact that selling SSA bonds is not as difficult as it used to be. Quantitative easing has left investors bursting with liquidity and the central banks lie in wait ready to hoover up between a third and a half of a vast chunk of new issuance. Underwriting risk is negligible.

These times won't last (probably), but that doesn’t mean the present fees are merited set, as they were, in times when syndications were a trickier affair. Suggesting that the status quo is a happy medium between the high fees deserved in difficult markets and the low fees justified in easier markets implies an enviable degree of foresight. How could anyone possibly draw up a table that would fairly balance these extremes?

It would be far simpler to implement a lower fee schedule for those instruments that are eligible for ECB purchases, which could then be discontinued when, or if, the purchase programmes end.

 

Funding SSA infrastructure

Besides paying for the work that goes into individual syndications, bankers often justify fees by claiming that they pay for the whole market infrastructure. Reducing fees, they say, would diminish the quality of ancillary services that issuers rely on — advice, trading and secondary market support. But do these costs scale with every deal? And yet the fee wallet has grown substantially over the past few years and especially since the cornavirus pandemic when borrowing requirements rocketed but so did QE.

While overall volumes raised through syndications have been fairly steady until the colossal increase in 2020, the amounts raised at the long end of the curve where fees are highest have climbed sharply. It’s clear that doing business at 15, 20 and 30 years in 2021 is no longer the tricky proposition it was in 2011. Already in May, we’ve had $239bn of syndicated supply at 15 years or longer, compared to $150bn in the whole of 2011.

Bankers are swift to warn of the consequences of lowering fees — reallocation of resources away from the SSA business and juniorisation of staff. But then they admit that this has been happening already, despite the fact they are making more money by doing more long dated business.

 

A services menu

Running an SSA franchise is an expensive business. There’s no doubt of that, and banks deserve to be compensated for the work that they do. What is unfair, however, is that every issuer pays the same regardless of the services they use.

Auctions are perhaps the prime example. It is well-known that primary dealers put in orders far in excess of what they’ll be able to sell, with government bond desks taking large losses to secure league table position. This is typically compensated for by a cheque in the form of syndication fees, won in part thanks to those league table heroics.

Without a more complex compensation structure, syndication fees need to be high enough to keep primary dealers invested in the business, but why should issuers that don’t require banks to run loss-making auctions pay the same fees? In effect, agencies subsidise the sovereigns. One solution would be to lower fees for those issuers that don’t have auction programmes. Another, simpler solution would be to lower syndication fees for everyone, but charge for auctions - although that would require what some might see as cartel behaviour on the part of the banks if they are to stop competing on price.

Trading is also lumped in as a bank service that issuers pay for via syndication fees. Some issuers demand a higher level of secondary market activity from banks, making markets to ensure they keep volatility to a minimum. Some request secondary market activity spreadsheets and use these to create league tables to help decide who gets the syndication mandates. This activity can cost banks money and, insofar as issuers encourage it, banks should be paid for it.

But why not bill for this activity separately? Issuers can decide whether or not they want secondary market support from their bookrunners beyond a stabilisation period for a new issue, and, if so, can pay for it. If not, they can take the consequences of additional volatility in their curve.

The much-vaunted full service package that borrowers fund with their syndication fees is an attractive concept, but this is the public sector and borrowers have a fiduciary obligation to taxpayers to pay as little as possible. It is hard for them to justify to their paymasters why they should pay higher fees when the benefits of doing so are not clearly quantified.

Packaging multiple services under one fee applied to every borrower is not a billing policy good for modern governments. Transparent, itemised billing that allows borrowers to pay for the services they judge to be worth the money is a better option.

Bankers will tell borrowers that they need to take a long term view of their relationships with investors, and that their advice and services are crucial to achieving this. They may be right, but it is only right the borrower that pays the piper calls the tune.

 

 

Lowering fees will do more harm than good 

Public sector borrowers should be careful what they wish for. Those looking to follow the European Union’s lead in lowering the underwriting fees they pay to banks could cause an unwelcome distortion to their market at a time when getting funding through the door with minimal drama is perhaps more crucial than ever.

The SSA fees debate was triggered after the EU published a lower fee schedule last month for its €800bn Next Generation EU funding programme. The EU will pay, on average, 0.068% less across the curve for syndicated transactions than the standard fees in the SSA market.

But the fees for the EU’s NGEU programme should not form a precedent for the market.

The EU will raise €150bn a year – mostly through syndications, at the start of the programme at least – making it a different beast from any other public sector borrower. No other issuer comes close to this scale of syndicated activity.

The EU's gigantic borrowing programme is also not supposed to be permanent. Once the €800bn has been raised by 2027, the debt will start rolling off and the average maturity will shrink until 2058, by which it is to be repaid.

 

Risk? What risk?

Perhaps the strongest argument SSA issuers have for lowering fees, besides copying the EU, is that the current fee schedule is not proportionate to the underwriting risk banks take, in the age of huge central bank bond buying. Fees were last reset in the aftermath of the global and eurozone financial crises.

But this is naïve. Yes, monetary policy has propped up the bond market. But the fees cover so much more than underwriting risk. Borrowers are also paying for the health of the secondary market, which gives investors the confidence to know that if they want to, they can trade their bonds and that prices maintain a degree of stability.

That doesn't come free, and yet it saves issuers many more basis points over time in avoided price shocks compared with the basis point or so they would save from lower primary market fees.

In fact, in the case of primary dealerships, this is a loss-making service where syndication fees are used to cover those costs. There are also plenty of other bonds banks sell for issuers that don't make them much, or any, money. Admittedly much of this is done in the name of winning fee paying syndications but it is still cheap, even subsidised, funding for borrowers.

Reducing fees – which are already lower than in some other markets – would put further pressure on the bottom line for banks, leading to a weakened market as resources were directed to more profitable activities.

 

Never mind the price, feel the quality

Fewer banks will mean reduced competition, which will weaken the quality of the service issuers need. This could even lead to increased fees if the pool of banks left is so small that they are able to dictate the fees themselves.

The primary dealership model has been under severe pressure for years with various banks pulling out of it either in specific markets or altogether. Lowering syndication fees would be another final nail in the coffin.  

Issuers also demand banks provide them with advice and constant updates whether they are ready to print a deal or not. That requires boots on the ground and an array of skilled staff. The more experienced they are, the more expensive, of course, but the better that advice will be.

Would an issuer charged with raising funding at the best cost for the public purse be better off doing deals recommended by junior bankers with advice from traders whose experience goes back just a few years, or from seasoned veterans who have been through numerous crises and who have been shown to have a good read on their market in all sorts of conditions?

 

'Race to the bottom'

Banks will compete for whatever fees are available. It is baked into the business model. But as one syndicate banker warned it could spark a “race to the bottom”.

That means it is up to issuers to think about the long-term value of a robust SSA bond market to their funding costs.

Simply assuming that doing deals is easy at the moment because central banks are underpinning the entire market is short-termist and naive.

Issuers have borrowing programmes to get through that are bigger than ever and the world is still not out of the pandemic. The future is unpredictable. Borrowers have a duty to ensure that they do nothing that makes their market similarly so.

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