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’No, the ECB can’t prop up Italy
We won’t know if it really did happen, not until next week’s figures on Securities Markets Programme purchases. (Current total: €74bn)
But since there was plenty of rumour on Tuesday that the European Central Bank (via the Bank of Italy) intervened to buy Italian bonds from a terrified secondary market,
The same crisis, again and again
Here’s a great collection of charts from Société Générale on Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and the short-term treadmill that binds them all (click to enlarge):
No sooner had the Greek parliament said yes to the Medium-Term Fiscal Strategy (MTFS),
The face of Ireland’s new bank
Yes, Anglo Irish and Irish Nationwide have been stitched together to make… the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation. It will take about a decade to ‘resolve’ them.
Although we’re sure readers can think of a better name.
That was the Irish housing boom that was
A big hat-tip to Lorcan for this — the Irish 2011 census, which includes a nice chart of increases in housing stock, 2006-2011:
Over the period, Ireland’s housing stock expanded by 13.3 per cent,
Another Danish bank falls into a fjord of failure
Finansiel Stabilitet har indgået overdragelsesaftale med Fjordbank Mors A/S
Som det fremgår af Selskabsmeddelelse nr. 12 af d.d. fra Fjordbank Mors A/S, har banken indgået aftale om, at bankens aktiver og en del af passiverne overføres til en ny bank under Finansiel Stabilitet A/S.
IMF to Europe: could you try TAF please?
In this context, it will be essential to bring the unproductive debate about debt re-profiling or restructuring to closure quickly.
We were so distracted by the IMF’s pragmatic controversial application of the word ‘unproductive’ in its Article IV consultation on the eurozone…
Shouting Greek rollover, whispering Brady bonds
In which FT Alphaville once again asks, what kind of fiscal transfer does Europe really want for Greece?
Since some way or other, a transfer it will have to be.
Monday’s answer from the Eurogroup sidestepped the issue,
The lesser-spotted variegated burdensharing for senior bondholders
So Ireland has been busy threatening to throw senior bank debt investors under a bus. Again.
Earlier this week, Irish finance minister Michael Noonan announced plans to force “substantial” burdensharing for investors in the senior debt of Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide .
The debt dark side
Picturesque reflection du jour on Thursday’s twin threats to Greek debt and European senior unsecured bank bonds, courtesy of an IFR analyst:
Quite.
UPDATED: Going off the bailout script, Greek-Irish style
[UPDATE: Courtesy of Reuters, Papandreou has announced in a recorded statement that he will reshuffle his cabinet and request from Parliament a vote of confidence for his new government. Journalist Matina Stevis is also reporting that finance minister Giorgos Papaconstantinou could be replaced in the reshuffle and that the vote will take place Sunday at 2200 BST.]
Or,
UK pensioners 1 Irish bank 0
Irish taxpayers… 0?
For your perusal — a letter sent on Monday by Brown Rudnick to Bank of Ireland, challenging some (coercive) terms in its debt buyback.
Click image for the full letter:
Painting Portugal’s debt decline
Courtesy of Tradeweb data (and via FT Alphaville’s rubbish MS Paint skills) here’s a chart of those dying peripheral bond trading volumes in 2011, as reported by the FT on Monday:
Greece, flatlining.
Europe’s hidden, peripheral volatility
I dream of single-name volatility calculations on peripheral eurozone CDS…
Markit’s VolX indices do some of this already, of course. They track realised volatility for European and North American CDS markets using the standard CDX and iTraxx indices.
An Allied Irish credit event query, redux
Readers are at this point excused a slight sense of déjà vu…
That’s a credit event query appearing for Allied Irish Banks, a second time. Isda has accepted the request for consideration.
Someone asked Isda back in April whether a government order to make Allied Irish buy back subordinated debt had triggered credit protection.
NEIN, Herr Schäuble
One really has to admire ECB president Trichet.
His ability to bat away difficult questions without saying anything remotely controversial is phenomenal.
That said, there are some points worth picking up on from Thursday’s presser,
Will the last Irish bank to leave the market please turn out the lights
Quite a bombshell in Bank of Ireland’s latest, after-hours update on its bid to raise €4.35bn in capital to plug crisis losses:
If stockholders approve the proposals, the combination of the proceeds of the Rights Issue,
The wonkiest web debate ever – Germany’s ‘stealth bailout’
Holy cow, who knew the intricacies of the eurozone’s payment system could be so controversial?
Hans-Werner Sinn, a respected German economist, riffed on a point first made by John Whittaker, an economics professor at Lancaster University,
Taking the eurozone’s housing temperature
Some graphics from Danske Bank to ponder ahead of the ECB’s Thursday meeting:
Related link:
S&P sees eurozone, UK housing headwinds on swelling rates - FT Alphaville
Bis the burdensharing – new Greek exposure numbers
Something new from the Bank for International Settlements to mull over this Monday morning.
The BIS has released its Quarterly Review — and with it those infamous foreign claims numbers.
According to the new figures,
This is really not normal ECB tightening
There’s the effect of rising European Central Bank rates on households in the periphery, and there’s the effect of two-tiered rate markets on periphery banks:
And quite often –as in these charts by Goldman analyst Dirk Schumacher– the two effects meet.
For Nama’s eyes only
*The name’s Daly. Frank Daly. And I, representing the Irish National Asset Management Agency, will be attending the Second Annual Global Intelligence Forum, to be held in Dungarvan, Ireland on July 11-13,
Euro exit as legal quagmire
Ignore (for now) the question of whether, or when, or should the periphery leave the euro, as part of a debt restructuring or a long process of fixing their balance of payments crisis.
We want to have another look at its legal possibility.
A (hard) Greek restructuring by the numbers
Or, losers in a Greek debt restructuring.
Some estimates courtesy of JPMorgan’s flows and liquidity team:
The ECB bought a large amount of Greek government bonds through its Securities Market Program.
Playing collateral games in the Portugal bailout
€35bn worth of Portguese-government guaranteed bank bonds is probably heading straight for the European Central Bank’s repo facilities.
But don’t expect that to do much for Portugal’s banking system.
The Irish pain of RBS, charted
Ulster Bank Group accounts for 10% of the Group’s total gross customer loans or 9% of the Group’s Core gross customer loans. The impairment charge of £1,294 million for Q1 2011 was £135 million higher than the £1,159 million impairment charge for Q4 2010.
The O’Lloyds zombie, in context
Not too surprising to see Lloyds’ effort at kitchen-sinking Irish exposures in its Q1 results, with impairments up £500m more than guided to £1.14bn…
Even so, it’s a nice test case of how bad Irish property loan losses could conceivably get,
Antonio Horta-Orsorio clears the deck at Lloyds
RTRS-LLOYDS CEO SAYS “I REALLY DO NOT SEE ANY KITCHEN SINKING IN THESE RESULTS”
Well, Antonio Horta-Orsorio might see it that way, but it’s very unlikely the City will agree.
The size of the provision Lloyds has taken cover potential payouts to thousands of purchasers of PPI loan insurance (£3.2bn) is way,
Aer Lingus stake set for take off?
Aer Lingus, the troubled Irish flag carrier, has been in focus on Tuesday.
The Daily Mail reckons Ryanair is making a third attempt to acquire the airline, in a bid to create an all-Irish national champion: