What happened to the whipping boy of bank capital?

This week, financial markets were spooked by the write-down of Additional Tier 1 securities of Credit Suisse. Soon after the writedown, a discussion ensued regarding its legitimacy. One camp argues that investors in these securities should have read the instruction manual. See the pointy opinion piece in IFR by Prasad Gollakota, the former co-head of… Read More What happened to the whipping boy of bank capital?

How questionable is the comparability of Basel risk weights in the EU banking sector?

In a couple of weeks’ time, at the FEBS conference in Rome, Stefan Kerbl and Zsofia Döme from the Austrian national bank (OENB), will present a paper on the comparability of Basel risk weights in the EU banking sector. The short story: according to Stefan and Zsofia there are significant differences in the ways European… Read More How questionable is the comparability of Basel risk weights in the EU banking sector?

That feeling when you notice that EU leverage ratio requirements are at risk

This week, the EBA and BCBS published the Basel III monitoring results. They show a further improvement of European banks’ capital positions, largely fulfilling the future regulatory capital requirements, with only a very small number of banks suffering from potential capital shortfalls. I found Figure 9 of the EBA report interesting. It shows the evolution… Read More That feeling when you notice that EU leverage ratio requirements are at risk

Five years after the first Basel III coco issuance, the Netherlands “gets” CoCos.

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.