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The ECB’s second purchase programme was one week old last Friday, having taken its first faltering steps on November 11. Its progress has been far from heartening.
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Without German support, it looks like the idea of a European guarantor syndicate idea has failed to get off the ground. Germany needs to shoulder its responsibility as the eurozone’s strongest economy. Otherwise the ailing eurozone will be beyond help.
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The European Commission has had it in for ratings agencies for some time. It misguidedly apportions at least some of the blame for the region’s sovereign debt woes on sovereign rating actions. Its revenge is an attempt to decrease the agencies’ influence. Some of its aims are good but cack-handed implementation may bring a whole new set of risks.
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Afme’s response to the capital calibrations in Solvency II doesn’t inspire much confidence in the European Commission. On optimistic assumptions, their drafting has been thoughtless rather than malicious, but neither possibility is pleasing. What else is slipping through the net?
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Regulators, investors and banks have painted themselves into an undercapitalised corner. But this isn’t a way out of the present deleveraging and bad asset bind. Countercyclical requirements are a tough political sell but not a bad solution.
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European banks have plenty of good assets, and US treasuries know it. It's time to connect the dots — and Barclays is showing the way.
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In repaying the unidentified holders of $1bn of unguaranteed, senior unsecured Anglo Irish bank debt, the Irish government has betrayed its electorate. But it is the ECB that should take the greater blame.
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Hong Kong’s interbank market tracks its counterpart in the US, reflecting the peg of the local currency to the US dollar. But rising loans threaten a dislocation between Hibor and Libor rates — and banks should take a cautious approach to their lending for the rest of the year.
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With international banks caught in a capital conundrum, the smart money is moving to the denominator of capital ratios — risk weighted assets. To square the circle of pressure to lend, to recapitalise, and to derisk, banks are turning to techniques once dubbed “financial alchemy”. But we should think twice before dismissing this process.
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Throughout Alan Roch’s many years on RBS’s EM syndicate, he has become accustomed to jetting off to faraway exotic lands and fitting in with other cultures and ways of doing things. So he ought to have been well prepared for his recent move to become the bank's head of Asia Pacific syndicate.