Even with Monday’s 7.6% decline, China’s stock market is on a historic tear, having risen more than 50% over the past year. Yet much of this investor frenzy is based on three flawed premises: that China’s decelerating growth necessitates stimulus, that such stimulus will reduce borrowing costs for firms, and that lower borrowing costs will incentivize spending and ultimately jumpstart growth.
New data from my firm’s China Beige Book—the largest private study of China’s economy—belie each of those assumptions. Our data make it clear that China doesn’t desperately need to stimulate its economy, that its recent attempts to lower interest rates via stimulus have done the opposite, and that if Beijing opts for large-scale stimulus anyway, it won’t work as intended.
Market participants often seem to misunderstand what China’s slowdown means. While the economy has continued to decelerate broadly, important components—including profit performance and the labor market—have shown overall improvement since 2014’s second-quarter nadir. In the just-completed fourth quarter, China Beige Book data on sales, profits and job growth all looked a bit better, as they had in the third quarter. This is a tentative rebound, to be sure, but it is hardly the gloom and doom narrative that most commentators (glued to older data) have now accepted as gospel.
Recent “stimulus” measures, including November’s cut to the benchmark lending rate, haven’t reduced borrowing costs for firms. The opposite has happened. Since last year’s second quarter, according to our data, the cost of capital has risen across the board—for bank loans, shadow-bank loans and especially bonds.
Perhaps most frequently overlooked: Firms still don’t want to borrow. The share of firms applying for and receiving loans dropped again in the fourth quarter, to the lowest levels we have recorded since beginning to survey in the first quarter of 2012. Since then, the share of firms borrowing has now dropped by more than half.
Crucially, firms don’t want to spend either. In the fourth quarter, growth in capital expenditure ticked down for the fourth straight quarter, also notching our survey’s all-time low.
Even the fourth quarter’s best performers—services firms—are caught in the wave: In multiple regions this quarter, including those that house the critical cities of Shanghai, Guangdong and Chongqing, services firms saw improved revenue growth, yet the proportion that hiked capital expenditures dropped anyway, in some cases dramatically. If firms don’t want to spend, monetary stimulus is a lost cause.
Plummeting crude-oil prices are a reason for optimism, given that China is a huge net consumer of energy. Our data track a steady pattern of disinflation in the Chinese economy since the first quarter of 2013, with sales prices, wages and material-input costs all continuing to rise, but ever more slowly. With the impact of cheap oil yet to be felt, 2014’s disinflation could become outright deflation in 2015.
Producer deflation is much better for an economy than consumer deflation. But with the economy slowing, Japan undertaking record quantitative easing and the eurozone headed in that direction, any sort of deflationary headwind may make it awfully hard for Beijing to resist another large stimulus of its own.
Here we get to the critical takeaways for investors: China’s slowdown may create the illusion that China has little choice but to stimulate, but our data show otherwise. Yet even if such stimulus is ultimately enacted, it simply will not work as intended.
Firms haven’t been interested in borrowing or spending on new projects for a year now. It is possible that low enough interest rates could change their behavior but to date rates haven’t been pushed downward by easing measures.
Instead, what companies are most likely to do if more liquidity is injected into the system is jump deeper into the roaring stock market. Already some of the inflows into stocks have come from the floundering property sector that Beijing has tried to stabilize.
If more firms move capital into stocks, the result won’t be more growth but rather more out-of-control prices for equities. And the structural impediments that are slowing China down will remain untouched.
Source: http://www.wsj.com/articles/leland-r-miller-chinas-stimulus-quagmire-1421688876
Showing posts with label liquidity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label liquidity. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 20, 2015
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Repo Rate Foretold China's Reserve Move
SHANGHAI—The timing of China's latest decision to ease conditions for bank lending came as a surprise to the markets.
But to anyone alert to the liquidity squeeze in the interbank market, in particular the sharp rise of the benchmark short-term interest rate, Saturday's announcement of a lower reserve requirement for banks was less of a shock.
In the week before the People's Bank of China's announcment, the weighted average rate on seven-day repurchase agreements, or repo—the most widely used funding instrument in China's interbank market—had surged, signaling that the country's banks were uncomfortably short of funds.
Early Friday the rate hit 7%, its highest level in a month, up 3.37 percentage points from a week earlier—mainly due to a five billion yuan (US$794 million) share offering by China Communications Construction Co., as depositors hoping to subscribe pulled a total of 180 billion yuan from the banks.
That matters for the real economy because the repo rate represents the cost of capital for China's banks, and is passed along to their borrowers.
The Chinese central bank has proven to be skillful in adjusting liquidity, controlling the ups and downs of the repo rate through its regular open-market operations and use of the reserve requirement ratio.
In 2009, with the global economy on the brink of crisis, the central bank sought to encourage investment by flooding the financial system with liquidity. The repo rate fell to 1% in the opening months of the year, which was key to pushing the banks into their stimulus lending spree.
In 2010, with the focus on controlling inflation, the central bank started to withdraw liquidity, sending the repo rate higher, a trend that continued—with some bumps—through 2011 and into 2012.
Looking back at Saturday's move with the benefit of hindsight, the surge in the repo rate provided a heads-up. The PBOC on Friday provided another signal of the urgency of easing liquidity conditions, using an unscheduled open market operation to inject cash into the system. By Friday's close, the seven-day repo rate was down to 5.31%.
Saturday's cut in the reserve requirement ratio is intended to do the rest of the job.
"We weren't expecting an imminent cut, but it didn't come as a big surprise either," UBS economist Wang Tao said of the reserve-ratio reduction. "In recent days, interest rates rose quite a bit in the interbank market, showing that liquidity is very tight."
The seven-day repo rate is increasingly seen as a key measure of liquidity conditions in China's financial system, and a more sensitive indicator of the direction of monetary policy than the rather static fixed-deposit and lending interest rates. Traded by banks, insurers, brokerage firms and fund-management companies, it also serves as a benchmark reference rate for pricing fixed-income derivatives such as interest-rate swaps.
![[CREPO]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_u6IAl3t1Pcjvi4qaa3Vhm7L-qudCgCndDdD7_s2mA1CqVKJb6l_54zc9HZ4V0IHOyvPg3NoeBfqSzYch_18ga0rXAN5uv6tfkRwQzA0st8iNf4dBV_1ZyPkniQWpQbtt3GoHyF_AYZgt_2dMqLH97u=s0-d)
Central bank operations aren't the only mover of China's money-market rates. China's banks are constantly buffeted by forces that add to or subtract from their capacity to lend. Moves by the PBOC are often seen as shifts toward either tightening or loosening. In reality, they are more often attempts to counteract the external shocks that knock money markets off course.
The current account is typically the main source of fluctuations. A current account surplus in most months of the year means extra funds coming into the banking system, requiring the central bank to raise the reserve requirement to soak up additional liquidity. Between August 2003 and June 2008, it raised the ratio to 17.5% from 6%, a series of increases that was as much about counteracting the inflow of funds from a growing current-account surplus as about tightening policy.
Speculative capital sometimes finds a way to evade the government's controls, and that also affects liquidity in the banking system. Analysts blamed capital outflows at the end of 2011 for drying up bank funds and forcing the central bank's hand on lowering the reserve requirement.
Initial public offerings can also have a marked impact. China's equities are typically priced low to ensure a bounce on the first day of trading. That leads to a rush to subscribe, as in the China Communications Construction case, with tens of billions or even hundreds of billions of yuan leaving the banking system as depositors chase the hot stock.
For most investors, keeping track of all the ins and outs of China's capital flows is not worth the trouble. But the seven-day repo rate provides a short cut. If it surges, some combination of forces is draining the system of liquidity. If it dips, banks are flush with cash.
To be sure, the repo rate doesn't always reveal what the central bank has in mind. It stayed little changed in the run-up to the last reserve-requirement cut in late November. And at the end of December, when banks' surging year-end cash demand pushed the seven-day repo rate up by 2.59 percentage points in a week, the central bank refrained from acting.
But analysts say that's a reminder to keep other factors in mind, rather than an excuse to ignore the repo rate's clues to the policy outlook.
"Any sharp increase in the interbank seven-day repo rate might be a catalyst for the final introduction of a cut in banks' reserve-requirement ratio, but economic fundamentals are still key to determining such crucial easing measures," said Zhang Junjie, a bond analyst at Ping An Securities.
Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204909104577236414128744998.html?mod=WSJASIA_hps_LEFTTopWhatNews
But to anyone alert to the liquidity squeeze in the interbank market, in particular the sharp rise of the benchmark short-term interest rate, Saturday's announcement of a lower reserve requirement for banks was less of a shock.
In the week before the People's Bank of China's announcment, the weighted average rate on seven-day repurchase agreements, or repo—the most widely used funding instrument in China's interbank market—had surged, signaling that the country's banks were uncomfortably short of funds.
Early Friday the rate hit 7%, its highest level in a month, up 3.37 percentage points from a week earlier—mainly due to a five billion yuan (US$794 million) share offering by China Communications Construction Co., as depositors hoping to subscribe pulled a total of 180 billion yuan from the banks.
That matters for the real economy because the repo rate represents the cost of capital for China's banks, and is passed along to their borrowers.
The Chinese central bank has proven to be skillful in adjusting liquidity, controlling the ups and downs of the repo rate through its regular open-market operations and use of the reserve requirement ratio.
In 2009, with the global economy on the brink of crisis, the central bank sought to encourage investment by flooding the financial system with liquidity. The repo rate fell to 1% in the opening months of the year, which was key to pushing the banks into their stimulus lending spree.
In 2010, with the focus on controlling inflation, the central bank started to withdraw liquidity, sending the repo rate higher, a trend that continued—with some bumps—through 2011 and into 2012.
Looking back at Saturday's move with the benefit of hindsight, the surge in the repo rate provided a heads-up. The PBOC on Friday provided another signal of the urgency of easing liquidity conditions, using an unscheduled open market operation to inject cash into the system. By Friday's close, the seven-day repo rate was down to 5.31%.
Saturday's cut in the reserve requirement ratio is intended to do the rest of the job.
"We weren't expecting an imminent cut, but it didn't come as a big surprise either," UBS economist Wang Tao said of the reserve-ratio reduction. "In recent days, interest rates rose quite a bit in the interbank market, showing that liquidity is very tight."
The seven-day repo rate is increasingly seen as a key measure of liquidity conditions in China's financial system, and a more sensitive indicator of the direction of monetary policy than the rather static fixed-deposit and lending interest rates. Traded by banks, insurers, brokerage firms and fund-management companies, it also serves as a benchmark reference rate for pricing fixed-income derivatives such as interest-rate swaps.
Central bank operations aren't the only mover of China's money-market rates. China's banks are constantly buffeted by forces that add to or subtract from their capacity to lend. Moves by the PBOC are often seen as shifts toward either tightening or loosening. In reality, they are more often attempts to counteract the external shocks that knock money markets off course.
The current account is typically the main source of fluctuations. A current account surplus in most months of the year means extra funds coming into the banking system, requiring the central bank to raise the reserve requirement to soak up additional liquidity. Between August 2003 and June 2008, it raised the ratio to 17.5% from 6%, a series of increases that was as much about counteracting the inflow of funds from a growing current-account surplus as about tightening policy.
Speculative capital sometimes finds a way to evade the government's controls, and that also affects liquidity in the banking system. Analysts blamed capital outflows at the end of 2011 for drying up bank funds and forcing the central bank's hand on lowering the reserve requirement.
Initial public offerings can also have a marked impact. China's equities are typically priced low to ensure a bounce on the first day of trading. That leads to a rush to subscribe, as in the China Communications Construction case, with tens of billions or even hundreds of billions of yuan leaving the banking system as depositors chase the hot stock.
For most investors, keeping track of all the ins and outs of China's capital flows is not worth the trouble. But the seven-day repo rate provides a short cut. If it surges, some combination of forces is draining the system of liquidity. If it dips, banks are flush with cash.
To be sure, the repo rate doesn't always reveal what the central bank has in mind. It stayed little changed in the run-up to the last reserve-requirement cut in late November. And at the end of December, when banks' surging year-end cash demand pushed the seven-day repo rate up by 2.59 percentage points in a week, the central bank refrained from acting.
But analysts say that's a reminder to keep other factors in mind, rather than an excuse to ignore the repo rate's clues to the policy outlook.
"Any sharp increase in the interbank seven-day repo rate might be a catalyst for the final introduction of a cut in banks' reserve-requirement ratio, but economic fundamentals are still key to determining such crucial easing measures," said Zhang Junjie, a bond analyst at Ping An Securities.
Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204909104577236414128744998.html?mod=WSJASIA_hps_LEFTTopWhatNews
Sunday, January 1, 2012
M&A Bất động sản là tâm điểm của thị trường năm 2012
Tâm điểm của thị trường bất động sản năm 2012 được nhiều chuyên gia dự báo sẽ là hoạt động M&A, chuyển nhượng dự án diễn ra mạnh.
Năm 2011 khởi đầu cho “làn sóng” chuyển nhượng dự án
Năm 2011 ghi nhận là một năm đầy khó khăn thách thức của thị trường bất động sản, dẫn đến tâm lý khách hàng là chờ đợi. Chính vì vậy, một loạt dự án bị khó khăn “kép”. Thứ nhất, là khó khăn tiếp cận nguồn vốn ngân hàng của các dự án, hàng loạt các dự án bị dừng giải ngân. Thứ hai khó khăn ở đầu ra, nhiều dự án đã xây dựng nên không bán được hàng. Thị trường hiện nay rất căng thẳng về thanh khoản.
Khó khăn của nhiều chủ dự án là không có tiền phát triển tiếp dự án, rất nhiều dự án xây dựng dở dang, trong khi tiền nợ các ngân hàng, nhà thầu ngày càng tăng lên.
Một số dự án cũng có cam kết tiến độ với khách hàng và họ cũng phải nỗ lực huy động vốn để thực hiện nhưng cũng rất khó khăn.
Trong bối cảnh như vậy, một số chủ đầu tư có nhu cầu chuyển nhượng dự án bất động sản. Có những dự án đã hoàn thành thủ tục pháp lý, làm xong hạ tầng nhưng thiếu tiền thì phải mời gọi đối tác hợp tác cùng chia sẻlợi nhuận để phát triển dự án sau này, thông qua chuyển nhượng vốn cổ phần (M&A). Có những dự án phải chuyển nhượng toàn bộ dự án…
Nhiều thương vụ chuyển nhượng dự án đã ra tăng từ giữa năm 2011, đặc biệt tại Tp.HCM. Trong khoảng tháng 7/2011, tại Tp.HCM đã có 2 thương vụ lớn như chuyển nhượng dự án tại khu dân cư Tân Tạo A và dự án Peninsula.
CTCP Đầu tư và địa ốc Khang An đã chuyển nhượng 80% tại khu dân cư Tân Tạo A cho Dacin Holdings của Singapore, và đã thanh lý hợp đầu tư hợp tác đầu tư với Vạn Phát Hưng 60% cổ phần trị giá 68 tỷ đồng và 14 tỷ đồng tiền phạt. Như vậy, dự án Tân Tạo A hiện có 3 đối tác Dacin 80%, Khang An 10%, và Phước Thành 10%.
Quỹ đầu tư JSM Indochina đã chuyển nhượng dự án Peninsula cho công ty Sao Sáng Saigon – công ty thành viên của ngân hàng Nam Á– với giá khoảng 228 tỷ đồng (11 triệu USD, lỗ 8 triệu USD so với giá quỹ này mua vào trước đó).
CapitaValue Homes Limited, một đơn vị trực thuộc Tập đoàn CapitaLand, đã thông qua công ty con là CVH Sparkle Pte. Ltd mua lại 65% cổphần của Công ty TNHH Quốc Cường Sài. Trước đó, CapitaValue Homes Limited đã được thực hiện mua lại 70% cổ phần của một dự án chung cư tại phường Bình TrưngĐông, quận 2-TPHCM của Công ty Khang Điền Sài Gòn
Tập đoàn Hoa Sen (HSG) cũng đã thông qua chủ trương sẽ chuyển nhượng hàng loạt dự án như: Căn hộ Hoa Sen Phước Long B và Hoa Sen Riverside (quận 9 - TPHCM), chuyển nhượng quyền sử dụng đất tại 123 Trần Não, phường Bình An, quận 2. Đồng thời chuyển nhượng 45% phần vốn góp tại dự án cảng quốc tế Hoa Sen -Gemadept...
Mới đây, Tama Global Investment Pte.Ltd.., đã mua lại 20% cổ phần của Công ty cổ phần Đầu tư và phát triển nhà đất Cotec (COTECLAND).
CTCP Xây dựng và Kinh doanh Địa ốc Hòa Bình cũng đã lên kế hoạch chuyển nhượng nhiều dự án như khu công nghiệp, khu nghỉ dưỡng, du lịch…
Ông Phan Xuân Cần- Chủ tịch Công ty BĐS SohoVietnam cho biết, nhiều dự án đang gặp rất nhiều khó khăn về vốn, để có thể phát triển tiếp dự án chủ đầu tư bắt buộc phải tìm kiếm đối tác, hoặc bán cả dự án cho đối tác khác. M&A trong lĩnh vực bất động sản đang “nóng” lên từng ngày, khi áp lực siết nợ của ngân hàng ngày càng tăng.
Các dự án chuyển nhượng chủ yếu tập trung tại Tp.HCM. Tại Hà Nội nhiều dự án cũng đã huy động
Năm 2011 khởi đầu cho “làn sóng” chuyển nhượng dự án
Năm 2011 ghi nhận là một năm đầy khó khăn thách thức của thị trường bất động sản, dẫn đến tâm lý khách hàng là chờ đợi. Chính vì vậy, một loạt dự án bị khó khăn “kép”. Thứ nhất, là khó khăn tiếp cận nguồn vốn ngân hàng của các dự án, hàng loạt các dự án bị dừng giải ngân. Thứ hai khó khăn ở đầu ra, nhiều dự án đã xây dựng nên không bán được hàng. Thị trường hiện nay rất căng thẳng về thanh khoản.
Khó khăn của nhiều chủ dự án là không có tiền phát triển tiếp dự án, rất nhiều dự án xây dựng dở dang, trong khi tiền nợ các ngân hàng, nhà thầu ngày càng tăng lên.
Một số dự án cũng có cam kết tiến độ với khách hàng và họ cũng phải nỗ lực huy động vốn để thực hiện nhưng cũng rất khó khăn.
Trong bối cảnh như vậy, một số chủ đầu tư có nhu cầu chuyển nhượng dự án bất động sản. Có những dự án đã hoàn thành thủ tục pháp lý, làm xong hạ tầng nhưng thiếu tiền thì phải mời gọi đối tác hợp tác cùng chia sẻlợi nhuận để phát triển dự án sau này, thông qua chuyển nhượng vốn cổ phần (M&A). Có những dự án phải chuyển nhượng toàn bộ dự án…
Nhiều thương vụ chuyển nhượng dự án đã ra tăng từ giữa năm 2011, đặc biệt tại Tp.HCM. Trong khoảng tháng 7/2011, tại Tp.HCM đã có 2 thương vụ lớn như chuyển nhượng dự án tại khu dân cư Tân Tạo A và dự án Peninsula.
CTCP Đầu tư và địa ốc Khang An đã chuyển nhượng 80% tại khu dân cư Tân Tạo A cho Dacin Holdings của Singapore, và đã thanh lý hợp đầu tư hợp tác đầu tư với Vạn Phát Hưng 60% cổ phần trị giá 68 tỷ đồng và 14 tỷ đồng tiền phạt. Như vậy, dự án Tân Tạo A hiện có 3 đối tác Dacin 80%, Khang An 10%, và Phước Thành 10%.
Quỹ đầu tư JSM Indochina đã chuyển nhượng dự án Peninsula cho công ty Sao Sáng Saigon – công ty thành viên của ngân hàng Nam Á– với giá khoảng 228 tỷ đồng (11 triệu USD, lỗ 8 triệu USD so với giá quỹ này mua vào trước đó).
CapitaValue Homes Limited, một đơn vị trực thuộc Tập đoàn CapitaLand, đã thông qua công ty con là CVH Sparkle Pte. Ltd mua lại 65% cổphần của Công ty TNHH Quốc Cường Sài. Trước đó, CapitaValue Homes Limited đã được thực hiện mua lại 70% cổ phần của một dự án chung cư tại phường Bình TrưngĐông, quận 2-TPHCM của Công ty Khang Điền Sài Gòn
Tập đoàn Hoa Sen (HSG) cũng đã thông qua chủ trương sẽ chuyển nhượng hàng loạt dự án như: Căn hộ Hoa Sen Phước Long B và Hoa Sen Riverside (quận 9 - TPHCM), chuyển nhượng quyền sử dụng đất tại 123 Trần Não, phường Bình An, quận 2. Đồng thời chuyển nhượng 45% phần vốn góp tại dự án cảng quốc tế Hoa Sen -Gemadept...
Mới đây, Tama Global Investment Pte.Ltd.., đã mua lại 20% cổ phần của Công ty cổ phần Đầu tư và phát triển nhà đất Cotec (COTECLAND).
CTCP Xây dựng và Kinh doanh Địa ốc Hòa Bình cũng đã lên kế hoạch chuyển nhượng nhiều dự án như khu công nghiệp, khu nghỉ dưỡng, du lịch…
Ông Phan Xuân Cần- Chủ tịch Công ty BĐS SohoVietnam cho biết, nhiều dự án đang gặp rất nhiều khó khăn về vốn, để có thể phát triển tiếp dự án chủ đầu tư bắt buộc phải tìm kiếm đối tác, hoặc bán cả dự án cho đối tác khác. M&A trong lĩnh vực bất động sản đang “nóng” lên từng ngày, khi áp lực siết nợ của ngân hàng ngày càng tăng.
Các dự án chuyển nhượng chủ yếu tập trung tại Tp.HCM. Tại Hà Nội nhiều dự án cũng đã huy động
 Ông Phan Thành Mai: "thị trường M&A bất động sản năm 2012 chắc chắn sẽ khó phát triển vượt bậc nếu các dự án BĐS tiếp tục thiếu vốn." |
Một số dự án đang xây dựng nhưng lại khó khăn về đầu ra như văn phòng, khách sạn, tổ hợp …đều có như cầu chuyển nhượng. Chẳng hạn như tòa nhà văn phòng ở quận 7 cao hơn 20 tầng đang có nhu cầu chuyển nhượng với tổng giá trị hơn 700 tỷ đồng.
Còn theo số liệu thống kê của Stoxplus, bất động sản là lĩnh vực đứng thứ 3 về hoạt động M&A sau lĩnh vực hàng tiêu dùng và tài chính. Tổng giá trị về M&A trong 9 tháng 2011 đạt khoảng 2,67 tỷ USD, trongđó lĩnh vực hàng tiêu dùng chiếm hơn 1 tỷ USD, tài chính 453 triệu USD và bất động sản 251 triệu USD.
Năm 2012: Sẽ “nóng” M&A bất động sản
Dự báo của nhiều chuyên gia bất động sản, hoạt động M&A sẽ gia tăng mạnh mẽ trong năm 2012- 2013 đó là hệ quả tất yếu của vấn đềtái cấu trúc thị trường, sau một vài năm tăng trưởng nóng.
Trong Diễn đàn “Doanh nghiệp Việt Nam – Singapore” được tổ chức mới đây, ông Phan Thành Mai- Tổng thư ký Hiệp hội BĐS Việt Nam nhận định,thị trường M&A bất động sản năm 2012 chắc chắn sẽ khó phát triển vượt bậc nếu các dự án BĐS tiếp tục thiếu vốn. Nếu các công cụ tài chính mới phi ngân hàng được triển khai, đồng thời có chính sách tín dụng nới lỏng linh hoạt thì thị trường sẽ có dấu hiệu tích cực vào cuối năm 2012, nếu không có chuyển biến gì mới về chính sách tín dụng thì thị trường sẽ tiếp tục giai đoạn trầm lắng kéo dài.
 Ông Phan Xuân Cần: "Năm 2012 sẽ là năm có nhiều thương vụ M&A liên quan đến bất động sản, nếu thị trường tiếp tục không có đầu ra." |
Hiện SohoVietnam đã tiếp nhận khoảng 80 dự án đang có nhu cầu chuyển nhượng chủ yếu tại Tp.HCM, Hà Nội và Đà Nẵng, có những dự án có trị giá hàng trăm tỷ đồng. Không chỉ giá bất động sản giảm mạnh trong năm qua, mà giá chuyển nhượng dự án cũng theo đó mà giảm khá sâu, trung bình khoảng 30% so với năm 2010.
Ông Cần khẳng định, chắc chắn năm 2012 có nhiều dự án bất động sản sẽ phải bán. Nói chung các dự án hiện nay đã cầm cự trong năm vừa rồi và cấu trúc lại nguồn vốn nhưng sẽ còn rất nhiều khoản tài chính của họ đáo hạn vào quý 1, quý 2 năm 2012, điều đó sẽ là áp lực cho chủ đầu tư dự án buộc phải bán đi dự án hoặc hợp tác đầu tư. Năm 2012 sẽ là năm có nhiều thương vụ M&A liên quan đến bất động sản, nếu thị trường tiếp tục không có đầu ra.
Source: http://land.cafef.vn/20111227100038439CA43/ma-bat-dong-san-la-tam-diem-cua-thi-truong-nam-2012.chn
Friday, December 30, 2011
Gold: Haven turns riskier but retains its appeal
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered – that is how many gold bulls have felt in recent months. As the eurozone crisis has ratcheted up to fever pitch, their beloved precious metal – supposedly a haven against precisely this sort of financial market turmoil – has barely budged in price.
Since mid-October, gold has traded in an uninspiring range of roughly $1,650-$1,750 a troy ounce.
More worryingly for its supporters, the metal appears to be moving more closely in line with risky assets such as equities and emerging-market currencies than other havens such as US Treasuries.
“There has been a lot of disappointment with gold in the fourth quarter, especially from those who were banking on the metal’s safe haven properties, given the escalating situation in Europe,” says Edel Tully, precious metals strategist at UBS, the Swiss bank, in London.
The problems began in September. After hitting a record of $1,920 early in the month, gold collapsed 20 per cent in a matter of days. It was the metal’s sharpest weekly fall since 1983.
The plunge came amid a broader market sell-off, surprising some investors who had assumed that holding gold could act as a form of insurance against bullish positions in other commodities or equities.
The reason for the sharp fall was simple: as investors were rapidly losing money on other positions, they sold their gold to raise cash.
However, it caused investors to question gold’s claim to be a “safe-haven” asset. The metal’s case has not been helped in the months since, when gold has tended to rise as risk appetite rises, and fall when risk appetite wanes.
The dominant theme has been a “dash for cash”.
Most prominent among the investors forced to sell was John Paulson, the hedge fund manager who shot to prominence with an enormously profitable bet against the subprime mortgage market during the financial crisis.
Over the third quarter, Mr Paulson’s fund sold more than a third of its holdings of the SPDR Gold Shares exchange traded fund, equivalent to about 34 tonnes.
Elsewhere, European banks have been using their gold holdings to raise cash amid a widespread shortage of dollars in the region.
Dealers say that banks – primarily in continental Europe – have been actively lending gold in the market in exchange for dollars. The move has pushed gold lease rates – the implied interest rate for lending gold in the market in exchange for dollars – to record lows.
The one-month gold lease rate in December hit -0.57 per cent, suggesting that a bank lending gold for one month would have to pay to do so, at an annualised rate of 0.57 per cent.
“Gold is a function of liquidity,” says Walter de Wet, head of commodities research at Standard Bank. “Certainly there has been a lack of liquidity, particularly in the interbank market in Europe. That is putting a drag on gold.”
But while investors are feeling bruised, few are ready to call time on bullion’s decade-long rally.
“Commodity hedge funds are still involved in trading gold. It is still a popular trade,” says Fabio Cortes, manager of a commodities fund of funds for Oakley Capital, the private equity firm in London. Of the metal’s safe haven appeal, he adds: “It hasn’t lost it – it has been reduced to some extent.”
Indeed, the fundamental drivers of the surge remain in place. Central banks are buying record quantities of the metal. The so-called “official sector” bought 364 tonnes of gold in the first three quarters of this year, according to data from Thomson Reuters GFMS, the precious metals consultancy, compared with sales of more than 400 tonnes a year in the decade to 2009.
Moreover, Chinese demand is increasing rapidly as Beijing deregulates the country’s gold market.
Chinese imports of gold from Hong Kong have hit record levels in recent months, and the country is on track to more than double imports from last year.
Matthew Turner, precious metals strategist at Mitsubishi, the Japanese trading house, argues that the crucial determinant of whether gold lives up to its safe-haven billing is whether investors fear inflation.
“At different times investors seek different safe havens. During equity market crashes, investors tend to seek safety in the dollar, or bonds, and only sometimes gold,” he says. “Other financial panics might involve investors selling government bonds or fleeing the dollar due to rising fears of inflation. In these scenarios, gold can outperform.”
This suggests the trigger for gold’s next move is likely to be the actions of central banks – particularly the European Central Bank, which many investors believe will be forced to provide a backstop to the eurozone by more aggressively intervening in the sovereign bond markets.
In the second quarter of 2010 and the third quarter of this year – the two moments when the ECB moved to expand its bond-buying activities – gold demand jumped.
For next year, the ECB is likely to be the key to gold’s performance.
As Ms Tully predicts, if the ECB were to embark on a policy of quantitative easing, it would have “explosive implications for gold”.
Source: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/6e68b5e2-24d9-11e1-8bf9-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1i2iwpKa6
Forex traders hunt for fresh havens
Investors looking for havens from the eurozone crisis have had a frustrating year.
Central banks in countries that have attracted people trying to seek shelter in their currency have sent a firm message: only a limited number of investors are welcome here.
That has left investors hunting for havens outside the US dollar, which has attracted huge inflows this year from those looking for somewhere liquid to park their cash.
But analysts say that there are fresh haven opportunities in 2012. They point to the Norwegian krone and the Canadian dollar as among those currencies that could do well in times of market stress.
New currency havens next year would be welcomed by investors who have this year found themselves thwarted by unexpected foreign exchange interventions.
For the first half of the year, the yen and the Swiss franc were seen as ideal. Haven currencies – also referred to as “hard” currencies – are usually those that are backed by stable governments and economies. Strong exports and current account surpluses, which Japan and Switzerland possess, are key factors as they are likely to shore up demand for a currency.
But following the market turmoil over the summer, the demand for the yen and the franc grew so high that the Swiss National Bank and the Bank of Japan took steps to weaken their respective currencies.
Alarmed by the rate at which foreign money was flooding in from investors concerned about the escalating eurozone crisis, the Bank of Japan embarked on its biggest monthly foreign exchange intervention in eight years in August. That sent the yen, which had risen more than 5 per cent against the dollar since January, tumbling nearly 5 per cent in one day.
The move was welcomed by the country’s exporters, who had been complaining that a strong yen was harming trade. But foreign investors were undeterred. The central bank sold more yen on October 31 after the currency hit its strongest ever level against the US dollar.
Then, on September 6, the Swiss National Bank said it was prepared to buy euros in unlimited quantities to weaken the Swiss franc, effectively pegging its currency to the euro. Markets opted not to test its resolve.
Investors instead began looking for the next best haven. Some have pointed to Norway, a big oil exporter with a current account surplus.
Indeed, HSBC’s currency analysts argue that the krone is “in a league of its own” against other G10 currencies due to Norway’s strong economic fundamentals.
But others have raised concerns over liquidity. Investors this year have prioritised liquidity above most other factors, fearing that any “lock down” in markets will leave them unable to get their cash out quickly and return it to shareholders or other investors. That explains why the US dollar has been the ultimate haven this year.
Trade in the Japanese yen accounts for 19 per cent of the $4tn a day foreign exchange market. Trade in the Swiss franc is more than 6 per cent. In the krone it is just 1.3 per cent, according to the latest data available from the Bank for International Settlements.
“The main problem is finding something that has all the constituents of a safe haven,” says Simon Derrick, currency analyst at BNY Mellon. “The thing that everyone forgets is liquidity.”
The pound is another contentious haven. Sterling has tended to strengthen this year when the euro weakens, as the UK economy has looked in better shape than that of the eurozone. But if the outlook for Europe deteriorates significantly, the UK is very exposed through its trade links. That has led some to label the pound a “bogus” haven.
Others believe the Canadian dollar could come to the fore. The so-called “loonie” is backed by a politically stable country, with large reserves racked up by the central bank. On the downside, it is traditionally referred to as a commodity currency because of its oil exports, making its performance closely tied to that of the global economy. Its strong trade links with the US also make it susceptible to any weakening in the US economy.
However, Simon Derrick, currency analyst at BNY Mellon, argues that those who believe the US dollar will be a decent haven next year should consider diversifying into the Canadian dollar, as that should rise against other major currencies if the US dollar does well.
Investors hopeful of less government intervention to weaken currencies next year could be disappointed. The SNB believes the franc is still significantly overvalued. Many analysts believe the central bank will still adjust the ceiling at which it will buy euros to weaken the franc again next year.
The Bank of Japan is also widely expected to take further action, though in the past intervention has not managed to weaken the yen for more than a few days due to the vast size of the market. As a result, many analysts still believe the yen will be a key haven next year.
But most agree the US dollar will remain the least contentious haven for 2012. “The anticipated relative outperformance of the US economy, especially if continued to be supported by fiscal and monetary policy, is expected to provide continued support for the dollar in the coming year. We maintain our view that the dollar and the yen will be the top performers among the G10 in 2012,” says Morgan Stanley.
Source: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/3fc72532-2d78-11e1-b985-00144feabdc0.html?ftcamp=rss#axzz1i2eOMioF
Hose and dry: The ECB fills banks with funds
WHEN economists think of the financial system, it is usually as a frictionless conduit through which money flows to areas of the economy where it is most needed. A better analogy right now might be of a hosepipe with a knot tied in it. The European Central Bank (ECB) is pumping unprecedented amounts of money into one end of the pipe, but how much of that will find its way to the parched real economy is another question entirely.
Start with the liquidity flowing into the euro-area banking system. On December 21st the ECB made available an eye-popping €489 billion ($628 billion) in three-year loans to more than 500 banks across Europe. The money was released in response to an almost total freeze since July in the bond markets that are an important source of long-term funding for banks. Demand for this ECB funding was much higher than expected, signalling just how much stress there is in the system.
The ECB had previously tried to ease pressure by offering one-year loans to banks. Yet this had done little to encourage them to lend to companies or people, since the money banks owed the ECB would have to be repaid before they were due to be repaid by their customers. A shortage of longer-term funding also contributed to an increase in the riskiness of the whole financial system, since banks were being forced to rely ever more on short-term financing that needs to be rolled over.
The flood of money being pumped into banks by the ECB goes a long way towards easing these funding pressures. Analysts at Morgan Stanley, an investment bank, reckon that the new facility adds about €235 billion in additional funding to the banks (since some of the money is being used to replace shorter-term loans) and takes the central bank’s total lending to the banking system to €979 billion. More important is the fact that it only has to be repaid in three years, which takes the average maturity on ECB loans to about 21 months, up from a mere ten weeks before the auction.
This should help insulate most large banks from turmoil in the funding markets. But not all will be protected. Although the ECB has essentially made an offer of unlimited funds, banks are still constrained in how much they may borrow by the quality of the collateral that they are able to hand over. This is because their collateral is subject to an initial “haircut”, or reduction in value. A portfolio of relatively safe government bonds might attract a small haircut, whereas one consisting of loans to small businesses might be reduced in value by 40% or more. A bank focused on this area of business, as many of Europe’s smaller savings banks are, might thus only be able to borrow 60% of the value of its outstanding loans.
A second constraint is that if the collateral the ECB holds falls in value, then banks need to post more. This also happens if there are credit downgrades on the bonds posted as collateral. The ECB’s haircut on sovereign bonds that are rated above “A-” is just 1.5%, but if they fall another notch this jumps up to 6.5%, Morgan Stanley notes. Weak banks in peripheral countries remain vulnerable to a downward spiral in which their holdings of government bonds are downgraded and fall in value, forcing them to come up with ever more collateral to keep borrowing from the central bank. It was this sort of collateral spiral that felled MF Global, a bust American broker, in its ill-fated bet on euro-area government bonds.
Now that banks are getting funding, the big worry is whether they will do more than merely hoard it. The early signs are not encouraging. Over the Christmas weekend bank deposits at the ECB rose to a record €412 billion. That partly reflects a traditional year-end rush to tidy up banks’ balance-sheets but also nervousness about lending directly to others.
Banks also have to present plans in January showing how they will raise an extra €115 billion in core capital to meet a new threshold imposed by the European Banking Authority. This capital shortfall has already prompted asset sales by banks, which would rather shrink their balance-sheets than tap shareholders. The ECB’s auction may make a credit crunch less severe, but it is not enough to avoid one.
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
American banks: Contagion? What contagion?
THE financial crisis of 2008 mowed down banks in America and Europe with equal abandon. Not so this year’s upheaval. European banks, struggling to fund themselves, are tightening credit. American banks are eager to lend, albeit not to Europe. Their loan growth this quarter will the fastest since mid-2008, reckons Nomura, a bank.
This is partly because America’s banks are reasonably healthy. They have significantly bolstered capital since 2008 and now boast core capital of 9% of assets, well above regulatory requirements. While many European banks held dangerous quantities of American mortgages in 2008, American banks today have relatively little exposure to Europe’s troubled sovereigns. For the five biggest, total exposure to Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain (net of hedges) ranges from $16 billion at Citigroup, or 14% of core capital, to $2.5 billion at Goldman Sachs, or less than 5%, according to Peter Nerby of Moody’s, a credit-rating agency. (But if France gets into trouble, that would be a far bigger problem.)
Yet the least appreciated virtue of America’s banking system is that it is drowning in dollars, the byproduct of the Federal Reserve’s efforts to kickstart the economy through “quantitative easing”. The Fed has bought government and mortgage bonds to push their prices up and yields down. It pays for them by creating money, which it deposits in the reserve accounts of banks at the Fed. Since late 2008, those reserves have soared from virtually nothing to $1.5 trillion.
America’s biggest banks now boast liquid assets of three to 11 times their short-term borrowings, according to Moody’s. Despite European banks’ well-publicised funding problems, they too have benefited. Lou Crandall of Wrightson ICAP, a research firm, reckons that half of those reserves have ended up with the American subsidiaries of foreign-owned banks. German, Scandinavian, Swiss and French banks all have big holdings. “We’re seeing all sorts of strains on markets but no runs on banks because they are sitting on top of huge mounds of cash,” says Mr Crandall.
This seems paradoxical. If European banks hold so many dollars in America, why is a shortage of dollars in Europe driving up LIBOR, the rate at which banks are willing to lend to one another, and prompting deleveraging and asset sales? One reason is that the banks most desperate for dollars are not the ones with big American subsidiaries. Another is that even as European banks deleverage, they are trying to build up their liquidity buffers. And reserves are an attractive vehicle for that: they are one of the world’s few remaining risk-free assets, and at 0.25%, they pay more than Treasury bills.
Finally, some banks are clearly liquidating reserves as their private funding dries up. Mr Crandall reckons the reserves of five French banks fell by 22% between June and September, to a still generous $74 billion. This has helped to cushion America from the ill effects of deleveraging at European banks. Nomura notes that European banks’ American subsidiaries have begun to shrink their securities holdings but, so far, not their loan books. Nomura figures loans will soon follow, but American banks will benefit as they fill the void.
While America has largely escaped spillover from Europe’s banking squeeze so far, the shortage of dollars in Europe remains a problem. To relieve that pressure, the Fed lends dollars to the European Central Bank via a “swap” line, which the ECB then lends to its banks, for up to three months. Demand, so far, has been low, because of the stigma for any bank that uses the system, and the cost: 100 basis points more than a benchmark overnight rate.
On November 30th the Fed, ECB and other central banks sought to rectify this by lowering the spread to 50 basis points. Stockmarkets soared but the euphoria may not last: illiquidity is a symptom of Europe’s crisis, not the cause. As long as sovereigns are at risk of insolvency, their banks are, too. If the euro collapses, the resulting chaos will not spare America’s economy, despite the health of its banks.
Làn sóng mất thanh khoản đang lan rộng
Việc mất khả năng thanh toán được dự báo là có thể lan rộng và trở thành làn sóng đối với các công ty chứng khoán, khi họ liên tiếp lỗ và vốn chủ sở hữu cũng không còn nhiều.
Đầu tháng 9.2011, một số nhà đầu tư tìm cách chạy khỏi Công ty Chứng khoán SME (SME) vì cho rằng đơn vị này không thể đáp ứng các giao dịch rút, chuyển tiền của họ. Sau đó, SME bị Trung tâm Lưu ký Chứng khoán (VSD) đình chỉ hoạt động lưu ký 1 tháng (3.11-3.12.2011).
Mới đây, ngày 22.11, Công ty Chứng khoán Tràng An (TAS) cũng bị VSD cảnh cáo vì mất khả năng thanh toán cho các giao dịch chứng khoán. TAS không còn khả năng thanh toán trong các giao dịch mua bán với nhà đầu tư, đồng thời nợ Quỹ Hỗ trợ Thanh toán của VSD hơn 7 tỉ đồng.
Theo nguyên tắc, sau khi cân bằng lượng tiền nhà đầu tư mua và bán, nếu thiếu thì công ty chứng khoán phải xuất tiền để bù vào cho VSD. Trong trường hợp này, TAS bắt buộc phải bù thêm tiền cho VSD. Tuy nhiên, TAS tạm thời phải nhờ đến Quỹ Hỗ trợ Thanh toán của VSD để không phải hủy các giao dịch của nhà đầu tư như trường hợp của SME.
Khác với SME, Tổng Giám đốc TAS là ông Lê Hồ Khôi đã thừa nhận rằng, Công ty mất khả năng thanh toán vì không quản lý chặt khâu chuyển tiền của nhà đầu tư.
Nguyên nhân mất thanh khoản
Có nhiều lý do để một công ty chứng khoán rơi vào trường hợp mất thanh khoản. Với trường hợp của TAS, nhà đầu tư sẽ thấy có thể vì 2 lý do.
Thứ nhất, khách hàng quan trọng (dân trong nghề hay gọi là khách VIP) trước nay vốn được ưu ái mua trước chuyển tiền sau. Tuy nhiên, khi thị trường giảm mạnh, nhà đầu tư VIP không có tiền nộp nên bỏ của chạy lấy người. Nhiều giao dịch VIP như thế khiến công ty không kịp bù tiền dẫn đến mất thanh khoản.
Thứ hai, công ty chứng khoán thực hiện cho vay ký quỹ (margin) với tỉ lệ nhất định. Nhà đầu tư thấy giá cổ phiếu thấp và tiến hành bắt đáy. Sau đó giá cổ phiếu lại tiếp tục giảm buộc nhà đầu tư phải nộp thêm tiền vào tài khoản. Nếu nhà đầu tư không còn tiền hoặc không muốn nộp thì công ty chứng khoán sẽ ôm trái đắng.
Dù có bán ra cổ phiếu để thu tiền về cũng không đủ vốn vì giá cổ phiếu xuống thấp, chưa kể không thu được cả phần lãi vay của nhà đầu tư cho khoản vay ký quỹ này. Những giao dịch kiểu này khiến họ dần hao hụt tiền mặt, nhất là với những công ty chứng khoán có nguồn vốn hạn hẹp.
Một lý do nữa là do thiếu vốn, không ít công ty chứng khoán phải xoay xở bằng nhiều cách để đáp ứng tiền mặt cho nhà đầu tư mua cổ phiếu. Chẳng hạn, khi thực hiện các hợp đồng margin, họ phải kết hợp với ngân hàng để bù vào phần vốn cho nhà đầu tư vay ký quỹ với tính toán rằng, lãi suất cho nhà đầu tư vay cao hơn lãi suất ngân hàng. Tuy nhiên, lúc nhà đầu tư bỏ chạy thì chính công ty chứng khoán phải trả lãi cho ngân hàng.
Theo phần thuyết minh báo cáo tài chính của SME, các khoản phải trả đã tăng gấp đôi sau 6 tháng (tính đến 30.6.2011), lên hơn 600 tỉ đồng, trong đó phần nhiều là nợ ngân hàng.
Bên cạnh đó, một số công ty chứng khoán đã dùng những tài khoản ít giao dịch để bù đắp cho các giao dịch hiện thời. Đến khi những tài khoản này giao dịch trở lại hoặc muốn rút tiền, công ty lâm vào cảnh mất khả năng thanh toán. “Rõ ràng, vấn đề quản lý tách bạch tài khoản của nhà đầu tư và công ty chứng khoán chưa được quản lý tốt, xa hơn nữa là vấn đề quản trị rủi ro chưa được quan tâm đúng mức”, chuyên gia tài chính Phạm Thứ Triệu cho biết.
Đối với các tổ chức tài chính, lĩnh vực kinh doanh luôn được đẩy mạnh tối đa khi thị trường đang tốt. Thế nhưng khi thị trường xấu và kéo dài như thời gian qua, các khoản nợ quá hạn khó có khả năng thu hồi lại trở thành rủi ro lớn cho chính họ. Theo ông Phan Dũng Khánh, Trưởng Phòng Phân tích và Tư vấn Đầu tư Công ty Chứng khoán Kim Eng Việt Nam, ngay cả những công ty chứng khoán lớn cũng đang gặp khó khăn với các khoản tiền lớn cho khách hàng của mình vay.
Bởi vậy, hệ lụy của việc này thể hiện trước tiên ở các khoản phải thu trong báo cáo tài chính, mặc dù có thể được đưa vào nhiều mục khác nhau để giấu đi. Chẳng hạn, tính đến cuối quý III/2011, trong 338 tỉ đồng khoản phải thu ngắn hạn của Công ty Chứng khoán Sacombank (SBS) có tới 283 tỉ đồng là các khoản phải thu khác. Con số này ở Công ty Chứng khoán Sài Gòn (SSI) là 325 tỉ đồng (trong tổng số 443 tỉ đồng), ở Công ty Chứng khoán Kim Long (KLS) là 364 tỉ đồng (trong tổng số 377 tỉ đồng).
Ai tiếp bước SME và TAS?
Theo ông Triệu, từ giờ đến cuối năm sẽ có không ít công ty chứng khoán có vốn thấp như SME hay TAS lâm vào cảnh khó khăn, đầu tiên là mất khả năng thanh toán.
“Việc mất khả năng thanh toán trở thành làn sóng đang lan rộng là điều có thể dự báo được, khi họ liên tiếp lỗ và vốn chủ sở hữu cũng không còn nhiều”, ông nói. Theo ông, các công ty chứng khoán có vốn lớn tạm thời có thể cầm cự được.
Ông Triệu cũng dự báo, trong tổng số các công ty chứng khoán hiện nay, đến năm 2012 sẽ chỉ còn khoảng 1/3 tồn tại, khi mà các quy định quản lý công ty chứng khoán ngày càng chặt chẽ. Các công ty sẽ phải tính đến chuyện sáp nhập hoặc giải thể.
Tuy nhiên, khả năng sáp nhập hoặc mua lại là rất khó. Bởi hiện nay, công ty chứng khoán nhỏ tồn tại nhiều vấn đề như cho vay margin quá tay, tự doanh lỗ nặng mà phần nhiều là những cổ phiếu OTC (cổ phiếu trên thị trường phi tập trung) và tài chính không minh bạch.
Bên cạnh đó, tài sản cố định của công ty chứng khoán chẳng đáng là bao (ngay cả tài sản cố định của công ty chứng khoán lớn như SSI cũng chưa tới 170 tỉ đồng). Với tài sản không đáng kể và không có tiềm năng rõ nét thì tìm được người mua là khá khó khăn.
Nếu công ty chứng khoán chịu quan tâm phát triển mảng quản trị rủi ro cho chính đơn vị mình sớm hơn, thì khi thị trường khó khăn kéo dài cũng không đến nỗi khiến nhiều công ty phải điêu đứng như hôm nay.
Source: http://cafef.vn/20111207015938535CA31/lan-song-mat-thanh-khoan-dang-lan-rong.chn
Monday, December 5, 2011
Bank funding: The dash for cash
USUALLY it is banks that put customers under a microscope before lending them a penny. But in Europe banks are the ones now facing scrutiny before investors, companies and savers will lend them any cash. Faced with an investor strike, banks are putting a halt to new loans and selling or pawning all they can. Unless the investor strike lifts soon, Europe risks a credit crunch. At worst, there may even be bank runs and failures.
In one sense, a slow bank run is already taking place in the market for bank bonds, which in happier times provide the long-term and stable funding that allows bank regulators to sleep peacefully at night. Since July these markets have frozen up almost completely for European banks. Bond issuance has plunged (see chart) and has shifted towards secured bonds, which are backed by assets that investors can grab if the bank defaults.
David Lyon of Barclays Capital, an investment bank, reckons that just €17 billion ($24 billion) in unsecured European bank bonds have been sold since the end of June, compared with €120 billion in the same period a year earlier. “In the context of the requirement, this is a paltry amount of funding,” he says.
The run on European bank-funding markets in some respects mirrors the one taking place in some government-bond markets. This is to be expected given the links between banks and governments. During the 2008 crisis, governments propped up their banks. Now, governments are leaning on banks to keep buying their bonds. As a result even the strongest banks from peripheral euro-area countries such as Spain or Italy (where yields on an auction of three-year government bonds surged to an unsustainable 7.9% on November 29th) are finding it hard to borrow from investors.
Yet the bond-buyers’ strike afflicting banks is more worrying than the sovereign one. No banks are regarded as havens in the way that British and German government bonds provide a refuge for investors. Even strong banks in “core” euro-area countries are being frozen out of markets.
A second vital source of funding is borrowing through short-term interbank markets or tapping money markets. Both of these are also drying up. American money-market funds, which were a big source of dollars for the European banking system, have reduced loans by more than 40% over the past six months.
Banks are reluctant to lend to one another except for the shortest possible time, usually overnight. “Every night for the past few months [chief financial officers of big banks] have been getting reports saying they are short of a few billion,” says one banker. “They take the phones and start calling all the other banks to ask if they can borrow €100m here and some there.”
For now, this is keeping the system ticking over, partly because a bank lending money overnight knows it may have to ask for the favour to be returned next week. Euro-area central banks are also leaning heavily on their biggest banks to keep supporting the smallest with interbank loans.
An area of particular vulnerability, the “nightmare scenario” in the words of one banker, is that the trickle of deposits leaking from banks in peripheral countries turns into a full-flood bank run. The risk that savers will lose faith in banks seems remote for now. Yet it is not unthinkable. Greek depositors have been shifting their money for the past year. Savers in Italy and Spain now appear to be starting to do the same. And large corporations, which are able to shift deposits easily, are seeking relative safety, either with large banks in core countries or further afield.
Tighten belts and brace yourself
Max Warburton, an analyst at BernsteinResearch, notes that German carmakers are now buying German government bunds or are quietly moving their money directly to the European Central Bank (many of them already have banking licences because they provide car loans). “We don’t believe they are at the stage of buying gold…but perhaps it’s not far off,” he wrote in a recent report.
Banks are responding by desperately hoarding the cash they have, selling assets and slowing new lending. The most recent survey of credit conditions in the euro area shows a sharp tightening in September. The effects are being felt far more widely than in the euro area. In central and eastern Europe borrowers fret about regulatory changes that are encouraging banks in Sweden and Austria to cut their cross-border exposures. In Asia, too, the withdrawal of European banks is likely to drive up borrowing costs and restrict the availability of credit, according to analysts at Morgan Stanley, an investment bank.
Yet unless funding markets reopen, even aggressive deleveraging by banks will probably not allow them to shrink their balance sheets quickly enough.
This suggests a need for more action by central banks. On November 30th a group of central banks introduced new measures to ease a shortage of dollars in the banking system (see article). That will ease the pressure, but banks also need help raising longer-term debt. The ECB currently offers one-year loans, but these give little comfort to banks, which generally lend to their clients for longer periods and are reluctant to write new loans unless they can find matching funding. Another option could be for governments to guarantee bank debt, but strained national accounts probably rule this out.
Inaction could be disastrous. The longer banks are unable to raise funding, the greater the chance that one may fail. As one banker ominously puts it: “you are getting further along the train tracks towards the buffers.”
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Risk management: regulatory scrutiny pushes risk centre stage
The practice of risk management has been transformed in recent times from one that used to look mainly backwards to one in which foresight and prediction are the keys to the game.
Risk monitoring and compliance have moved centre stage since the global financial crisis, driving the need for ever more advanced systems that attempt to capture the many and varied risks involved in the markets of today.
Ian Castledine, global head of investment risk and compliance product at Northern Trust, points out that five to 10 years ago, for the majority of pension funds, most risk measures were largely backward looking whereas now predictive models are much more the norm.
“Since the credit crunch the focus has been on counterparty risk, liquidity risk, transparency – in terms of the ability to understand what is going on in your portfolio at a security and derivatives trade level – and credit.”
He adds that with all of these factors efforts are made to integrate implied metrics into asset owner models. “For example, we are launching a credit dashboard that ties together the credit rating with a host of different metrics and paints a rich tapestry as a result. We also focus on how pension schemes use the analytics we provide. We have made efforts to break down and simplify the ‘technical talk’ into more easily understandable data and analytics,” he says.
Underlying much of the explosion of interest in risk management and compliance is heightened regulatory scrutiny. This has led many market participants to outsource to specialist risk managers the task of introducing the checks and balances necessary to satisfy regulators that their business is being conducted in the most prudent and transparent way.
Mr Castledine says regulatory change has created an immense area of opportunity across a number of industries, highlighting the examples of servicing Nordic banks for Solvency II or the pressure on Dutch pension funds to be fully transparent.
Companies are investing heavily in risk management tools against the backdrop of frequent regulatory change and the new climate of caution in the wake of the crisis.
As a result, providers of analytical tools have recently become sought-after acquisition targets. Evidence of this came earlier this month as IBM made its second analytics-related acquisition in a week, seeking to expand its offerings for risk management for financial services and related companies.
The company is buying Algorithmics, a Toronto-based provider of risk analytics and services to bank and other investment companies, for $387m. That follows its planned purchase of UK-based fraud prevention analytics provider i2 Group. It also bought OpenPages late last year to address operational risk. Indeed IBM has spent over $14bn on 26 analytics-related purchases in the past five years, expecting the market for analytics to be over $200bn by 2015.
IBM’s buying spree is further evidence that companies are increasingly recognising that their risk management monitoring must cover a vast array of potential factors.
One head of risk described what he was seeing as a new generation of client and risk monitoring characterised by the global trend of moving towards dynamic indicators, and away from a reliance on any one analytical measure.
New risks are continuing to be factored in to risk models. These include so-called frontier risks such as environmental and carbon, which were previously not quantified. Broadly, clients want their risk management providers to be able to capture, quantify and predict as broad an array of measures as possible.
Existing risk management providers are upgrading their services in the face of heightened competition. For example, Algorithmics, a provider of integrated collateral management and liquidity, regulatory and reporting solutions for the financial services industry, this month unveiled a new version of its regulatory reporting platform.
Within the asset management business itself, acquisitions have also been taking place.
For example, Natixis Global Asset Management announced earlier this month it had acquired a controlling interest in Darius Capital Partners, an investment advisory and research firm that provides customised hedge fund solutions to address institutional investors’ growing needs for transparency, liquidity and risk management. Such acquisitions are likely to be increasingly common as asset managers attempt to upgrade the risk management capabilities they can bring to the table.
Source: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/aaf4a432-d923-11e0-884e-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1etVluwVV
Risk monitoring and compliance have moved centre stage since the global financial crisis, driving the need for ever more advanced systems that attempt to capture the many and varied risks involved in the markets of today.
Ian Castledine, global head of investment risk and compliance product at Northern Trust, points out that five to 10 years ago, for the majority of pension funds, most risk measures were largely backward looking whereas now predictive models are much more the norm.
“Since the credit crunch the focus has been on counterparty risk, liquidity risk, transparency – in terms of the ability to understand what is going on in your portfolio at a security and derivatives trade level – and credit.”
He adds that with all of these factors efforts are made to integrate implied metrics into asset owner models. “For example, we are launching a credit dashboard that ties together the credit rating with a host of different metrics and paints a rich tapestry as a result. We also focus on how pension schemes use the analytics we provide. We have made efforts to break down and simplify the ‘technical talk’ into more easily understandable data and analytics,” he says.
Underlying much of the explosion of interest in risk management and compliance is heightened regulatory scrutiny. This has led many market participants to outsource to specialist risk managers the task of introducing the checks and balances necessary to satisfy regulators that their business is being conducted in the most prudent and transparent way.
Mr Castledine says regulatory change has created an immense area of opportunity across a number of industries, highlighting the examples of servicing Nordic banks for Solvency II or the pressure on Dutch pension funds to be fully transparent.
Companies are investing heavily in risk management tools against the backdrop of frequent regulatory change and the new climate of caution in the wake of the crisis.
As a result, providers of analytical tools have recently become sought-after acquisition targets. Evidence of this came earlier this month as IBM made its second analytics-related acquisition in a week, seeking to expand its offerings for risk management for financial services and related companies.
The company is buying Algorithmics, a Toronto-based provider of risk analytics and services to bank and other investment companies, for $387m. That follows its planned purchase of UK-based fraud prevention analytics provider i2 Group. It also bought OpenPages late last year to address operational risk. Indeed IBM has spent over $14bn on 26 analytics-related purchases in the past five years, expecting the market for analytics to be over $200bn by 2015.
IBM’s buying spree is further evidence that companies are increasingly recognising that their risk management monitoring must cover a vast array of potential factors.
One head of risk described what he was seeing as a new generation of client and risk monitoring characterised by the global trend of moving towards dynamic indicators, and away from a reliance on any one analytical measure.
New risks are continuing to be factored in to risk models. These include so-called frontier risks such as environmental and carbon, which were previously not quantified. Broadly, clients want their risk management providers to be able to capture, quantify and predict as broad an array of measures as possible.
Existing risk management providers are upgrading their services in the face of heightened competition. For example, Algorithmics, a provider of integrated collateral management and liquidity, regulatory and reporting solutions for the financial services industry, this month unveiled a new version of its regulatory reporting platform.
Within the asset management business itself, acquisitions have also been taking place.
For example, Natixis Global Asset Management announced earlier this month it had acquired a controlling interest in Darius Capital Partners, an investment advisory and research firm that provides customised hedge fund solutions to address institutional investors’ growing needs for transparency, liquidity and risk management. Such acquisitions are likely to be increasingly common as asset managers attempt to upgrade the risk management capabilities they can bring to the table.
Source: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/aaf4a432-d923-11e0-884e-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1etVluwVV
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Banks in Italy Find an Unusual Liquidity Lifeline
LONDON — The London Stock Exchange is becoming the lender of last resort for many banks in Italy as concerns over the country’s debt levels squeeze liquidity out of the Italian financial market.
With cash increasingly hard to come by, Italy’s banks are turning to CC&G, the exchange’s Italian clearinghouse, for short-term lending. That includes some of the country’s largest financial institutions, including Unicredit and Mediobanca, according to a person close to the situation.
While just two banks received short-term capital from CC&G in 2009, that number has now risen to 15 — half of them Italian and the rest European financial institutions that trade in the country.
Under terms of the deals, the clearinghouse, which acts as a middleman to guarantee trades between financial parties, is offering money to both Italian and European banks with a presence in Italy for up to three days.
The money, which comes from collateral that traders must put up to complete financial transactions, is deposited with the banks to cover shortfalls in liquidity. CC&G earns a profit by charging banks interest on the money that they borrow.
Previously, banks had used the so-called repo market, where banks lend capital to each other on a short-term basis, to meet their financing requirements. But fears about Italy’s ability to repay its debts has pushed up borrowing costs and reduced the ability of banks to access that market.
A spokesman for the exchange said the company was in close discussions with the Italian central bank about any potential problems in the country’s financial sector, and used stringent risk management to decide whether to give banks access to capital.
CC&G also doesn’t technically lend money to banks, but instead deposits the cash with them on a short-term basis. Under Italian law, this distinction makes CC&G a depositor with the banks, and places it ahead of other creditors looking to get their money back if any financial institution should fail.
The legal distinction may still leave CC&G exposed if a lender defaults. And analysts question the sustainability of lending to struggling banks. That’s particularly true as the collateral offered to institutions as short-term financing is often provided by the same bank’s separate trading operations.
Paul Rowady, senior analyst at financial consultancy TABB Group in Chicago, said the global squeeze on liquidity was forcing institutions to look elsewhere, including to clearinghouses, to meet their short-term financing commitments.
He added that central clearing parties might feel secure in lending to banks because it was on a short-term basis and they were eager for extra revenue.
“Financial entities are making money in new and different ways,” he said. “Just because times are bad doesn’t mean they’re not looking for profits.”
And Italy’s turmoil has been good business for the London Stock Exchange. According to the exchange, CC&G reported a 209 percent jump in income to £54.3 million, or $83.6 million, during the first half of the year, compared with the same period in 2010.
The Italian business now represents 14 percent of the exchange’s overall income, compared with just 5 percent in the first half of 2010.
Source: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/11/17/banks-in-italy-find-an-unusual-liquidity-lifeline/
Friday, November 4, 2011
Góc khuất tín dụng bất động sản
(TBKTSG) - Công ty cổ phần Địa ốc Dầu khí (PVL-HNX) đã chọn con đường bán lỗ 85 căn hộ của dự án Petro Vietnam Landmark để có tiền trả nợ ngân hàng. Trước đây PVL đầu tư vào dự án này với giá 21,36 triệu đồng/mét vuông, nay giá mà công ty chào bán thấp nhất chỉ còn 15,5 triệu đồng, chấp nhận lỗ gần 70 tỉ đồng.
Ngoài ra, Công ty Xây dựng và Phát triển nhà Hoàng Anh (HAGL Land) cũng vừa hạ giá bán 500 căn hộ của dự án An Tiến ở Phước Kiểng, Nhà Bè, TPHCM từ 18 triệu đồng xuống 14,5 triệu đồng/mét vuông. Hiện tượng cắt lỗ bất động sản sẽ còn lan rộng, nhưng ngay cả khi các doanh nghiệp cắn răng chịu lỗ, giải pháp này vẫn không khả thi vì thanh khoản thị trường thấp. Do vậy, giá nhà đất phải tiếp tục hạ xuống, đặc biệt khi áp lực trả nợ cuối năm đang đến gần.
Cầm hơi với lãi suất
Khoản vay 100 tỉ đồng của PVL tại Ngân hàng Liên Việt đáo hạn vào tháng 11-2011. Nếu trả được nợ, và sau đấy được ngân hàng cho vay lại, lãi suất mà PVL được chào là 25%/năm. Trong trường hợp không trả được nợ, lãi suất phạt tương ứng 150% lãi suất hợp đồng đã ký.
Lãi suất cho vay bất động sản không nằm trong diện 17-19%/năm như định hướng của Nhà nước. Hiện tại nó dao động xung quanh 22-27%/năm tùy người vay và dự án. “Ngay cả khi lãi suất dành cho bất động sản giảm về 18%/năm, các doanh nghiệp mới chỉ cầm hơi” - ông Đoàn Nguyên Đức, Chủ tịch Hội đồng quản trị Công ty Hoàng Anh Gia Lai (HAG), nhận xét. Ông cho biết giá bất động sản chưa đến đáy, vì giá tuy đã giảm, nhưng vẫn không tìm được người mua. Đến cuối năm nay và đầu năm sau tốc độ hạ giá sẽ mạnh hơn. Ba năm trước, HAG là công ty đầu tiên giảm giá bán căn hộ cao cấp xuống 1.200 đô la Mỹ, sau đó là 1.000 đô la Mỹ/mét vuông. Nay HAG sẵn sàng đưa giá bán xuống mức 800-700 đô la Mỹ/mét vuông, thậm chí thấp hơn nếu tìm được người mua.
Không chỉ các chủ đầu tư dự án nhìn vào lãi suất ngân hàng mà người mua nhà, đất cũng ngóng lãi suất. Với lãi suất hỗ trợ mua nhà 22-24%/năm, không có nhiều người đủ “dũng cảm” vay tiền. Khảo sát của một ngân hàng với các khách hàng cá nhân cho thấy người vay chỉ mạo hiểm vay mua nhà nếu lãi suất ở mức 15%/năm, mà mức này phải chờ vài năm nữa!
“Phá băng” bất động sản và hệ lụy
Ông Đức thẳng thắn: “Thời gian qua chúng tôi huy động được vốn nước ngoài là nhờ cao su và thủy điện. Nếu giới thiệu HAG như một doanh nghiệp chỉ kinh doanh bất động sản, nhiều nhà đầu tư sẽ bỏ đi”.
Sự đóng băng kéo dài của thị trường bất động sản song hành với mặt bằng lãi suất cao. Tuy nhiên, điều dễ nhận ra là sự đóng băng ấy chưa đưa đến một sự đổ vỡ hoặc thay đổi đáng kể nào mà cả người bán - người mua cần ghi nhận. Một bộ phận doanh nghiệp bất động sản báo lỗ trong chín tháng đầu năm, số khác lợi nhuận giảm mạnh, song số công ty khai tử vẫn chỉ đếm trên đầu ngón tay, nghĩa là khủng hoảng chưa xảy ra khi mà sự cầm cự vẫn đang có chỗ đứng.
Sự cầm cự không xuất phát riêng từ doanh nghiệp, nó đang phụ thuộc chủ yếu vào các tổ chức tín dụng. Nhiều khách hàng đến hạn trả nợ cuối năm, không thể tìm ra nguồn trả, đành phó mặc cho ngân hàng xử lý. Cách thông thường là ngân hàng siết dự án, đấu giá, phát mãi, thu hồi nợ. Phát mãi tài sản thế chấp là bất động sản vô cùng khó khăn. Một số doanh nghiệp và ngân hàng đành phải tính bài chuyển nợ từ ngân hàng này qua ngân hàng khác. Kiểu ngân hàng A giải chấp để khách hàng mang tài sản qua thế chấp tại ngân hàng B, vay tiền về trả ngân hàng A. Như thế, nợ chuyển từ ngân hàng A sang ngân hàng B hoặc ngược lại. Cách thức nguy hiểm này có thể gây ra hệ lụy đổ vỡ dây chuyền mà giới kinh doanh tiền tệ rõ hơn ai hết.
Độ xác thực của những con số
Theo quy định đến ngày 31-12-2011 dư nợ cho vay phi sản xuất của các ngân hàng phải ở mức 16% tổng dư nợ.
Mới đây chi nhánh NHNN TPHCM công bố cho vay phi sản xuất của các tổ chức tín dụng trên địa bàn đã giảm 16,65%. Ngày 7-9-2011 NHNN cho biết trong tám tháng đầu năm cho vay phi sản xuất toàn hệ thống giảm 16,95%, trong đó cho vay chứng khoán giảm 43%, bất động sản giảm 10%, tiêu dùng giảm 23%.
Thoạt nhìn, mức giảm của các chỉ số cho thấy doanh nghiệp đã trả nợ và không được vay thêm, còn ngân hàng đã đòi được nợ ở những lĩnh vực bị hạn chế phát triển tín dụng. Điều này không sai, nhưng liệu nó có phản ánh đúng thực tế lại là chuyện khác.
Báo cáo tài chính của các ngân hàng chỉ ra mức trích lập dự phòng rủi ro từ đầu năm đến nay tăng vọt, có ngân hàng tăng gấp hai lần so với cùng kỳ. Nguyên nhân chính là do nợ xấu, nợ dưới chuẩn tăng nhanh. Các khoản nợ này hầu hết rơi vào lĩnh vực chứng khoán, bất động sản. Một ngân hàng cổ phần trong tốp 5, lẽ ra lợi nhuận trước thuế chín tháng hơn 2.000 tỉ đồng, nhưng báo cáo hợp nhất rốt cuộc còn hơn 1.000 tỉ đồng vì phải trích lập dự phòng cho vay chứng khoán.
Cho đến nay chưa có một cuộc thanh tra, kiểm tra chính thức nào về sự hợp lý trong trích lập dự phòng rủi ro của ngân hàng. Liên quan đến bất động sản, nhiều khoản vay được ẩn dưới dạng trái phiếu doanh nghiệp. Từ ngày 20-10-2011 trái phiếu doanh nghiệp phải được tính vào dư nợ tín dụng và có lý do để tin rằng với việc tính toán mới này, dư nợ cho vay bất động sản hẳn sẽ phải tăng trong quí 4.
Source: http://www.thesaigontimes.vn/Home/taichinh/nganhang/64847/Goc-khuat-tin-dung-bat-dong-san.html
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