My review of a fascinating book on swaps, derivatives, and Dutch supervisory shenanigans by Hester Bais and Wink Sabée The book by Hester Bais and Wink Sabée documents poor conduct by banks in the Netherlands during the first decades of the century. Warning: for non-Dutch readers, the book is only in Dutch now, but I… Read More ‘Worst Bank Scenario’ a book that should spark a discussion on bank supervision
Will EBA will ever get it right when it comes to banks disclosures? After last week’s publication of proposed disclosure guidelines for banks, I am afraid that European bank disclosures will remain the wallflower of bank regulation … for some time at least. In the year of the AQR and the stress test, one would expect the… Read More EBA’s ongoing struggle with bank disclosures
Among the many publications that the EBA posted on its website last week, the Technical advice to the Commission (EC) on the treatment of unrealized gains deserves attention. Not only because of its content, but also because of the clarity, depth, and breadth of covering the issue of unrealized gains. Here is the context: EBA’s advice… Read More EBA advises Europe to overturn Basel III rule on unrealized gains
RBS N.V. features on the list of designated banks for the Comprehensive Assessment (CA). See the ECB CA document here. Though the name suggests Scottish origins, RBS N.V. is incorporated in the Netherlands; thus subject to direct Dutch supervision (and indirectly subjected to UK supervision via the Bank of England, which supervises RBS Group, the… Read More On the Comprehensive Assement List: RBS N.V.
On July 17, I posted on this blog about the difficulties that EU banks face when replacing pre-crises capital securities with Basel III compliant securities. Today the WSJ illustrates these difficulties for Deutsche Bank. This bank struggles with capital securities that were issued before the financial crisis made us painfully aware of their abysmal prudential… Read More Deutsche’s phase-out of old-style capital securities and the meaning of perpetual debt
Reuters reported on a leaking source from the European Banking Authority who mentioned that Europe has set itself a “completely illusionary” timetable for the next round of bank health checks. An interesting Catch 22 thus ensues: adhering to a strict timetable would lead to cutting corners, thus endangering the reputations of European bank supervisors. Not-adhering… Read More The European Bank Asset Quality Review, an inconvenience, but for whom?
One way a bank can manage its solvency is by changing the denominator of its solvency ratio, in this case of its BIS ratio. (The BIS ratio is the ratio of capital divided by Risk Weighted Assets often refereed to as RWA). The plot below shows holdings of assets that are categorized as available for… Read More Solvency management by the denominators
There is lots of talk going on about bank leverage. But how does it look? The plot below shows solvency ratios for U.S. banks (red) and U.S. corporates (blue). It looks different. Note, these are observations for the U.S. over years 1985-2012. Solvency is defined as accounting equity divided by total assets. Graphs are made… Read More Leverage of U.S. Banks and Corporates, a graph.
This week ING revealed its plans to spin off its Korean insurance unit, see this link from Bloomberg. This made me wonder how this bank-assurer would fare under the current capital rules for conglomerates. The current Fico Directive is clear: ” … the multiple use of elements eligible for the calculation of own funds at… Read More EU conglomerate capital rules expose ING’s weak group capital
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