Top Section/Ad
Top Section/Ad
Most recent
Premiums may not be at risk of increasing yet but caution should remain the watchword
It will be better for all in the long run if Venezuela can prioritise domestic spending over debt repayments
The rollover risks sovereigns are accepting in exchange for cheaper funding
It's not the juniors in capital markets who need protecting from obsolescence. They stand to benefit most from the deployment of AI
More articles/Ad
More articles/Ad
More articles
-
Vikram Pandit’s plan to put a spring back into Citigroup’s step contains a lot of good sense. Shorn of up to $500bn of non-core assets, Citi will refocus on high growth businesses and emerging markets and develop the world’s first “global universal bank”. But coming up with the strategy was the easy part. Delivering on his promises will be far tougher for Pandit.
-
The strategic reasons for Westpac to buy St George Bank have not changed for years. What has changed is that St George, heavily reliant on wholesale funding, has been weakened by the credit crunch, especially its reliance on securitisation.
-
The crumbling of the leveraged finance overhang is a rough process, verging on chaotic. Individual banks in syndicates are selling their positions without telling the others; opportunistic private equity funds are buying back their own debt below par. Most accept that some of this indiscipline is unavoidable, but loan bankers and the Loan Market Association are trying to decide where — and if — they can draw the line.
-
Monoline insurer MBIA, nearly drowned by losses on subprime mortgage-related securitisations, appears to have hoisted itself out of the river and be crawling, still covered in mire, up on to the bank. Could it slip back? Look closely at its numbers and you may not be filled with confidence.
-
For months the biggest impediment to recovery in the structured credit market has not been investors’ fear of defaults, but their fear of short term mark-to-market losses if CDOs fall further in price. Big asset sales, such as UBS offloading $15bn of US mortgage paper to BlackRock, will do a great deal to restore confidence that there is a realistic bottom to the value of securities and that it may be safe to buy.
-
Spreads on Turkish debt have been knocked wider and investors unsettled. Why? This time it is not bad news on the economic front, but the ugly reappearance of political instability, as the elected government is threatened, this time with a court case. Self-appointed guardians of Turkey’s secularism should understand: what the country needs is for the AKP government to get on with its job.