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’Bafin bashes the EBA over stress tests
Woah, woah, woah. What’s got under Bafin’s bonnet?
Bafin president Jochen Sanio had some harsh words for the European Banking Authority (EBA), curators of the European bank stress tests, in the regulator’s annual report published on Monday.
Snap news
Breaking pre-market news on Tuesday,
- Nationwide says provision to remain at current levels until economic recovery begins; reports half year results — statement.
- German regulator says Sky Deutschland’s financial statements in 2007 were flawed — report.
Tearing flesh off the FSA’s bones
Typical. You launch a regulatory reign of terror so wide-ranging, so baldly inquisitorial, that it would make Robespierre himself blush, and what do you get?
Oblivion.
As the Guardian reports, Britain’s new chancellor George Osborne will probably abolish the FSA after all. Starting with his Mansion House address on 16 June:
The invisible (BaFin) ban
While it has helped to trash stock markets and launch screaming terror over further political risk in the past couple of days, just how, exactly, is the German ban on naked CDS coming along?
Err…
Barclays Capital’s European Credit Alpha note on Friday provided more evidence that the ban has made an impact everywhere but on naked positions in sovereign CDS.
What Deutsche Bank did yesterday
So how restrictive is that German ban on naked short-selling of eurozone CDS?
Would it say, apply to Deutsche Bank, who do most of their CDS trading from outside Germany?
The answer, apparently, is no.
CDS bid-offer spreads you could drive a BMW through
In light of BaFin’s ban on naked credit default swaps on Tuesday, here are the latest CDS quotes for European peripheral sovereigns, courtesy of Markit:
Greece 530 basis points (-89)
Portugal 220bps (-50)
Ireland 165bps (-35)
Spain 155bps (-25)
And a quick description of Wednesday’s action from Markit’s Gavin Nolan:
What’s with Hannover and Generali De?
The (very) early price action in most of the financials in the BaFin naked shorts ban:
Related link:
How the Wolf Pack is (already) playing the BaFin ban – FT Alphaville
‘How can a [CDS] market be made?’
We’ve had bans on the naked short-selling of equities many times before.
But we don’t think we’ve ever seen a ban on naked shorting of credit default swaps (CDS).
That means BaFin’s latest move is a bit of an experiment.
How the Wolf Pack is (already) playing the BaFin ban
How do you say “law of unintended consequences” in German?
With the naked short-selling of eurozone bonds, credit default swaps and 10 financial companies out of the picture, all thanks to a BaFin ban,
BaFin statement on Germany’s naked short selling ban
Here’s the FT Alphaville translation of the statement by the German financial regulator on its move to temporarily ban certain naked shorts:
The Federal Financial Supervisory Authority has on Tuesday temporarily banned naked short sales of debt securities issued by eurozone countries for trading on domestic stock exchanges in the regulated market.
BaFin says no evidence of malign Greek CDS speculation
Just out from the Die Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht, better known (for obvious reasons) as BaFin, the German financial regulator:
Die Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht (BaFin) hat –entgegen anders lautender Berichterstattung – bislang keine Anhaltspunkte dafür gefunden,
Bundesbank to be sole regulator
Germany’s new government will appoint the Bundesbank, the German central bank, as sole regulator for banks and strip Bafin, the financial market watchdog, of its banking remit, officials said on Thursday.
Baaaaaaafin: Porsche, nochmal
Porsche is in the spotlight again. German regulatory titan BaFin is investigating the former car maker-cum-arbitrage opportunities fund once more.
Unfortunately though this isn’t a reopening of the brief,
Baaaaaaafin: No surprises here
GERMAN FINANCIAL WATCHDOG BAFIN SAYS HAS ENDED SHORT-SQUEEZE PROBE INTO VOLKSWAGEN SHARES NO EVIDENCE OF WRONG DOING.Indeed. Nothing unusual. At. All.
FRANKFURT, March 31 (Reuters) – Porsche landed a €6.8bn ($8.99bn) windfall from its share options in Volkswagen during the first half,
The disreputable market in Volkswagen
Taking the concept of excellent cornering to a new level, Porsche casually announced at the weekend that it had amassed a holding of 74.1 per cent in that other piece of German financial engineering, Volkswagen.
Bank of England statement
Following the announcements overnight, the Bank of England will be monitoring carefully the conditions in sterling money markets and will take appropriate actions if necessary to stabilise those markets.