With Grant Robertson’s announcement today that Kiwibank will be acquired for $2.1 billion from its state-owned shareholders, it is clear that the government hasn’t learned much about banking since the global financial crisis. Despite Robertson’s cynical spin about establishing a bank that is fully Kiwi-owned, one that keeps all profits in New Zealand, and will… Read More New Zealand’s bailout of Kiwibank
Once in a while I meet bankers and bank regulators, sometimes over a cup of coffee, sometimes over a glass of Pinot Noir. In fact, I will attend an event with RBNZ’s Adrian Orr tomorrow. He will speak at the brand new PwC centre in Wellington. When it comes to bank capital, the narrative shared… Read More When will the RBNZ admit its capital ratio definitions are bent? (And copy APRA’s plan to straighten them?)
This week the EC presented concrete steps to tackle non-performing loans, see this page. Ouch One and Ouch Two Two reasons why this is an interesting proposal. First, it forces banks to deduct any provisioning shortfalls directly from Common Equity Tier 1. Ouch! Second, the proposal amends the CRR, which is a Regulation. And we… Read More The European Commission’s proposal to accelerate the reduction of non-performing loans
In March 2009, the International Accounting Standards Board started an ambitious plan to make accounting for banks easier to understand. In no less than 97 pages, the IABS laid out its plan to reduce complexity in the reporting of financial instruments.* At the time, the IASB did the right thing. The standard in force was too complex.… Read More No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy
The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today the periodical update to its Risk Dashboard summarizing the main risks and vulnerabilities in the banking sector on the basis of the evolution of a set of Risk Indicators (RI) across the EU. You really have to critically analyse this report, as it contains mixed messages on the capitalization… Read More EBA updates its Risk Dashboard
Following up on an earlier post, the EC now published the answers on its consultation on long term finance. Thought the topic is hot, only 87 responses were submitted*, of which only two by academics. One by Martin Hellwig, the other by Martien Lubberink. The low public participation by academics is depressing, given that they called… Read More Results of EU consultation on bank financing are out
My post on EU leverage ratios yesterday attracted some comments on twitter, which may haven been triggered by misunderstandings. The CRR offers a short and clear summary of the Leverage Ratio definition in Article 429.1: “The leverage ratio shall be calculated as an institution’s capital measure divided by that institution’s total exposure measure and shall… Read More FYI some documentation on the Leverage Ratio for EU banks
Today, the EBA presented the 2015 EU-wide transparency exercise results. I am reading the data, which shows improvements in the resilience of the EU banking sector, covers around 70% of total EU banking assets for the reference dates of 31 December 2014 and 30 June 2015. (Some banks have not even published their capital positions… Read More Yay! EBA presents the 2015 EU-wide transparency exercise results
Uh oh, Jeroen Dijsselbloem form the Netherlands got into rough water this week: Dutch newspaper NRC had a nice scoop that showed how he relied on ING word smiths for writing a tax rule that renders bank capital instruments (CoCos) tax deductible, see full freedom of information documentation here. How bad is this? End 2013,… Read More Five years after the first Basel III coco issuance, the Netherlands “gets” CoCos.
Over the last weeks, the issue of bank Deferred Tax Assets (DTAs) came up again. What does not really help ending this story is the confusion on the subject of DTAs. Let me make a stab in trying to end the DTA confusion. Here are some snippets that from various news sources that I gathered.… Read More In defence of bank DTAs
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