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By common consent, the best bit about the EBA stress tests was the level of disclosure they provided. Why has this been so hard to do? Even if Europe pulls back from the brink this week or this month, banks should start planning for a permanently tougher market.
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With a week to go until the European Commission unveils its interpretation of Basel III, there is still everything to play for. The ABS market needs to tear its eyes from the terror in the eurozone periphery and kick down a few doors in Brussels.
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The latest whinge about Europe's bank stress tests is ludicrous. The tests are short of the mark, not over it.
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Confusion over the out-of-kilter pricing on Banco Espirito Santo’s debt exchange offer highlights the crucial importance of communicating with the market — especially with the Irish precedent of painful burden-sharing so fresh.
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The news that almost a third of Bank of Moscow’s $30bn loan portfolio may include non-performing real estate loans is a reminder that — in emerging markets in particular — international lenders' credit processes must be strong enough to drill through what can be opaque financial reporting.
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The European Commission might be breathing a sigh of relief that its messy involvement with Germany's WestLB will soon come to an end. But it shouldn't think for a moment that it has achieved anything.
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Criticising Cocos means criticising the consensus that these securities will solve the capital problems of the big international banks. Plenty of people, from DCM bankers to treasurers to politicians, have vested interests in backing the new system. Mervyn King should be applauded for resisting the urge.
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While it is difficult to argue against the logic of senior creditor bail-ins, the practicalities are complicated. Bank of Ireland’s capital generation exercise, even though it is so far limited to tier two paper, has highlighted some of the pitfalls. Regulators ignore these worries at their peril.
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After two months with no covered bond supply from peripheral Europe, the last two weeks have seen two benchmark deals that priced tight to where their respective government bonds trade. But that’s where the similarities end. The deals' outcomes could not have been more different.
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The FSA’s new guidelines on risk weighting securitisations are not surprising in themselves. The odd thing is that they’ve taken so long to break cover, while regulators have busily worked themselves into a lather over loan level data and other distractions.