RSS feedeurope
’Settlement failure financing, ETF edition
FT Alphaville has referred in previous posts to the emerging global settlement failure issue. We’d now like to address the curious case of settlement fail patterns across the repo universe.
As we have already noted,
More on fiscal union as the ultimate solution
On Friday, the theme of fiscal resolution to the European problem was gaining ground once again
Pimco’s Mohammed El Erian, writing in the FT, expressed the idea as one of only two possible paths for Europe at this stage.
Citi joins the European stress-test jamboree
Roll(over) up, roll(over) up, for the latest unofficial European bank stress test.
For previous editions see here, here, and here.
This week’s contestant: Citi.
And it has given us two for the price of one:
European securitisation – now mostly retained
A milestone, of sorts, in the European structured finance market.
At the end of the first-quarter of 2011, retained securitised debt made up a bigger proportion — at 51.7 per cent — of total outstanding debt (€2,076bn) than debt placed with investors,
Core blimey! IMF’s advanced Europe worries
The IMF is back with another chart-laden mash-up of empirical evidence and conventional wisdom.
On Thursday the Fund released the first of two European outlook reports for 2011. It’s a bumper (114 pages) offering that’s well worth skimming.
S&P sees eurozone, UK housing headwinds on swelling rates
Here’s a convenient continuation of the rising-European-rates-meets-real-estate theme.
Standard & Poor’s reckon “fresh headwinds are gaining force in Europe’s real estate markets” due to rising interest rates (or at least,
Japan’s supply-chain loss, Europe’s gain?
The supply chain issue affecting Japan appears to be getting much worse than initially expected.
For example, as Reuters reported on Tuesday, a shortage of parts is now threatening to force Sony to cut production or suspend output at five more plants in Japan.
The Belgians are still waffling
It’s Day 207 in the Big Belgium waffle house:
RTRS-BELGIAN GOVERNMENT MEDIATOR STEPS DOWN AFTER PROPOSAL FOR COALITION TALKS FAILS-PALACE
17:01 06Jan11 RTRS-BELGIAN GOVERNMENT MEDIATOR STEPS DOWN AFTER
Europe’s 2011 pressure points
Courtesy of Nomura — some possible European ‘stress’ dates to look out for this year (just think of 2010′s Irish guarantees in September or Spanish redemptions in July):
Print, cut and paste on your desk.
Europe’s America bonds
Think the Build America Bonds story is just about the US?
Think again.
One of the very reasons the subsidised bond scheme was created as part of the $787bn 2009 American Recovery and Investment Act,
No, Uncle Sam isn’t bailing Europe out
Either US Treasury officials (or Reuters ledes) are supreme masters of subtlety, or markets are very stupid.
We’re going with the latter.
We want you to carefully note the following wording of this Reuters report:
[Wilmot's PMI tour] The trend continues
Same sort of messages from Turkey, Poland and Norway: New orders were up 3.2 and 1.7 points, respectively. Norway was basically flat.
Not going to move the global needle but reassuring consistency.
Barge-pole, European debt? – no thank you
Why, oh why, are European bond yields zooming higher on Tuesday?
Well, Deutsche Bank’s global markets research team has been asking around, and it seems the answer is that no one in the market is currently willing to take them on at any cost.
A record GBPEUR 2-yr swap spread
This is a chart from Lloyds TSB showing the EUR/GBP exchange rate, versus the two-year EUR/GBP currency swap spread:
According to Adrian Schmidt, the bank’s newly appointed senior currency strategist,
And over in Belgium …
The bond market’s (Belgian) beer goggles have firmly come off.
10-year Belgium bond spreads over German bund equivalents have risen to circa 90 basis points, or about 40 per cent more than at the start of this month.
Ireland’s debt sale — well received, thank you very much
Results of Ireland’s highly watched bond auction are out, and the news is double-edged.
Yes, Ireland did get €1bn of 2018 and €500m of 2014 bonds sold, but the country had to pay handsomely to get the debt away.
Oh, not Europe again
Ah, Greece. Again. It’s just the way the European Commission tells ‘em – via Reuters (emphasis ours):
The European Commission called Slovakia’s decision not to participate in a euro zone bailout of Greece “unusual”
Stress Test Special – Markets Live at 4.45BST
If you’re thinking it’s an odd time to be holding a special session of our regular Markets Live chat, well that’s the Committee of European Banking Supervisors for you. It has chosen the close of play in Europe on a Friday as the perfect time to formally release the results of the European bank stress tests.
Stress-test rumours and reality
We’re sure things are very – err, stressful right now at the London headquarters of the Committee for European Banking Supervisors, ahead of the Friday publication of stress test results for 91 financial institutions across Europe.
Nomura thinks you should be more bearish on Hungary
Are you worried about Hungary? Why not?
According to analysts Peter Attard Montalto and Olgay Buyukkayali at Nomura, policymakers and investors are a tad complacent about the outlook for the troubled European country.
The three risks to global growth, from Barclays Wealth
Three regions, three problems.
According to strategists at Barclays Wealth on Monday, the global economy is facing three big risks in three big regions:
The risks are that U.S. consumers do not increasing spending,
The eurozone bailout fund: A Q&A
BNP Paribas analyst Ken Wattret has compiled a handy primer on the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), an appendage of the so-called European Stabilisation Mechanism.
The full note runs to seven pages and is available in the usual place.
Introducing the eurozone’s chief bail-out officer
The Economist totally beat us to coming up with a snappy job title for Klaus Regling, the man who took office on July 1 as the chief executive of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF).
(Recall:
Hugh Hendry: Soros has embraced socialism
On Thursday, George Soros penned an op-ed in the FT arguing that Germany needs to engage in a thought experiment, one involving withdrawing from the European single currency:
The restored Deutschemark would soar,
Staggered and leaky stress-tests, again
There was another intriguing leak from “EU sources” on the subject of European bank stress-tests on Thursday.
We’d already heard earlier in the day from Spanish government sources that Santander had fetched the best rating in the tests so far.
Eternal sunshine of the securitisation mind
It’s conference time!
The 2010 Global ABS meet is currently taking place at the Hilton Metropole, just across from the Marks & Spencer on Edgware Road in London. This is rather a fall from grace,
CDS report: Waiting for Trichet
A late sell-off in the US had the predictable dampening effect on European markets. The Markit iTraxx Europe opened 3.5bp wider at 140bp (+3.5) while the Markit iTraxx Crossover opened at 620bp, 6bp wider.
BNP Paribas: ‘Avoid Spanish banks for now’
Add the credit analysts at BNP Paribas to the growing list of those concerned about the robustness of the Spanish banks.
In a note published on Wednesday, analyst Olivia Frieser observed, in a comment on the findings of the June 2010 edition of the ECB’s Financial Stability Review,