Posts tagged 'Credit Event Auction'

One hundred and one pains in the SNS for the CDS market [update]

Lisa joined FT Alphaville in September 2011 after a tour of duty through the guts of the financial industry, having worked as an analyst at a bank and for a financial data company. She's now the Head of New Projects for FT.com.

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| Mar 11 17:25 | Comment |

The nationalisation of the fourth largest bank in the Netherlands is proving to be a pain for the credit derivatives market. It’s only by virtue of the small number of contracts outstanding that referenced SNS Bank that this hasn’t been making more headlines and causing more consternation.

The Isda Determinations Committee has already declared that the expropriation of the subordinated debt of the bank was a restructuring credit event, and that there might be some auctions to determine payouts under the swaps. But it looks like that result of the auctions could prove a bit farcical, with buyers of protection walking away with very little compensation for the total loss experienced by subordinated debt holders. Read more

Isda nationalisation of SNS Reaal a credit event? Yes it is

Lisa joined FT Alphaville in September 2011 after a tour of duty through the guts of the financial industry, having worked as an analyst at a bank and for a financial data company. She's now the Head of New Projects for FT.com.

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| Feb 13 14:39 | Comment |

SNS Reaal’s sub expropriation was a restructuring credit event after all, according to 14 of the 15 Isda determinations committee members on Wednesday:

 Read more

Systemically biased results – Part 2

Lisa joined FT Alphaville in September 2011 after a tour of duty through the guts of the financial industry, having worked as an analyst at a bank and for a financial data company. She's now the Head of New Projects for FT.com.

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| Mar 30 2012 18:54 | Comment |

Credit event auctions determine the amount paid out by credit default swaps when the company or sovereign referenced by the swap defaults. As such, the auction process is a vitally important part of the CDS market. Evidence from an academic paper, penned by Haoxiang Zhu and Songzi Du of the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, suggests that these auctions are systemically biased.

In Part 1 of our overview of the study, FT Alphaville gave a brief refresher on how auctions work as well as the intuition behind the source of the potentially in-built bias in credit event auctions. Here we get a bit more into the guts of the paper, describing some of its exact findings. We also review some of the descriptive statistics of their dataset. Read more

Systemically biased results – Part 1

Lisa joined FT Alphaville in September 2011 after a tour of duty through the guts of the financial industry, having worked as an analyst at a bank and for a financial data company. She's now the Head of New Projects for FT.com.

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| Mar 30 2012 12:34 | Comment |

A week has passed since the auction for Greek CDS. Perhaps it’s now time to reflect on the credit event process. Toward that end we wanted to share our thoughts in a combined derivatiViews and media.comment post, and we also encourage our readers to offer their views.

That was from Isda’a media.comment blog, in an entry posted on Wednesday. Excellent timing really, because FT Alphaville has a view to offer on credit event auctions. Read more

Just to be pedantic: $3.1bn net

Lisa joined FT Alphaville in September 2011 after a tour of duty through the guts of the financial industry, having worked as an analyst at a bank and for a financial data company. She's now the Head of New Projects for FT.com.

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| Mar 20 2012 19:18 | Comment |

The maximum amount that could have potentially settled in the Greece CDS credit event auction on Monday, as DTCC repository data that has just been released shows, was $3.1bn — not $3.2bn, as was widely reported.

This means that the maximum potential payout to credit default swap protection buyers, given that the final price in the auction was 21.5, was $2.4bn — not $2.5bn, as was widely reported. Read more

Final auction results

Lisa joined FT Alphaville in September 2011 after a tour of duty through the guts of the financial industry, having worked as an analyst at a bank and for a financial data company. She's now the Head of New Projects for FT.com.

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| Mar 19 2012 15:54 | Comment |

The Greece CDS auction is over!!

The final price for Greek bonds was set at 21.5, meaning that every buyer of $10m CDS protection on a default of the Hellenic Republic can expect a payout of $7.85m cash. Full results here and this is the headline: Read more

Net notional outstanding is NOT $3.2bn

Lisa joined FT Alphaville in September 2011 after a tour of duty through the guts of the financial industry, having worked as an analyst at a bank and for a financial data company. She's now the Head of New Projects for FT.com.

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| Mar 16 2012 19:10 | Comment |

The actual amount of net notional that settles in the Greece CDS auction on Monday isn’t going to be $3.2bn.

That $3.2bn has been the amount that’s been reported far and wide — including by us on several occasions — and it isn’t correct, and we want to own up. Read more

Monday is NOT the end

Lisa joined FT Alphaville in September 2011 after a tour of duty through the guts of the financial industry, having worked as an analyst at a bank and for a financial data company. She's now the Head of New Projects for FT.com.

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| Mar 16 2012 13:44 | Comment |

FT Alphaville has already described how sovereign restructuring credit events are not exactly run-of-the-mill in credit default swap land.

Furthermore, the “restructuring” in “sovereign restructuring” means that Greece CDS contracts might not do us the courtesy of quietly being closed out and dying, even though a credit event has officially been declared by the Isda Determinations Committee last Friday. Read more

Greece CDS payout cheatsheet

Lisa joined FT Alphaville in September 2011 after a tour of duty through the guts of the financial industry, having worked as an analyst at a bank and for a financial data company. She's now the Head of New Projects for FT.com.

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| Mar 13 2012 14:48 | Comment |

On Monday, we’ll finally know what amounts will be paid out to those who bought credit default swap protection on Greece, following last week’s credit event.

Which means it really is worth knowing how the payouts will be derived. In short though, they will be determined by the results of an auction to find the recovery price of old Greek bonds. This particular auction promises to be extra exciting because Greek bonds are a rather diverse bunch of assets. Much more on this shortly. Read more

Ok guys, hands up who booked the weird Greece CDS trades…

Lisa joined FT Alphaville in September 2011 after a tour of duty through the guts of the financial industry, having worked as an analyst at a bank and for a financial data company. She's now the Head of New Projects for FT.com.

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| Mar 09 2012 15:30 | Comment |

[Twiddles thumbs, waits for Isda to announce whether there's been a credit event on Greece...]

There’s a bit of an oddity in the pool of CDS trades on Greece. To understand it, we need to explain a bit to you about credit events, auctions, and the trading conventions on them. What it boils down to, is that it looks like someone booked some trades that go against the norm. Read more

Shhh! Isda cabal is acting in a predictable way.

Lisa joined FT Alphaville in September 2011 after a tour of duty through the guts of the financial industry, having worked as an analyst at a bank and for a financial data company. She's now the Head of New Projects for FT.com.

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| Mar 08 2012 17:26 | Comment |

What, not dramatic enough for you?

Well, then, how about an 18-page list of potentially deliverable bonds? This could come in useful if — and this is only a hypothetical, you understand — the Isda Determinations Committee were to be requested to rule on whether a restructuring credit event had occurred with reference to Greece because of the use of collective action clauses to force holdout creditors into the bond swap. Read more

Did your grandma buy Greece CDS or what?

Lisa joined FT Alphaville in September 2011 after a tour of duty through the guts of the financial industry, having worked as an analyst at a bank and for a financial data company. She's now the Head of New Projects for FT.com.

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| Mar 02 2012 12:54 | Comment |

FT Alphaville is starting to feel a bit bemused at the level of outrage expressed around town the globe on the behalf of those poor buyers of credit default swap protection on Greece. But, here’s a question: are they deserving of your pity? And who are they?

The situation at present is that there have been a couple of attempts to get the Isda Determinations Committee to declare a credit event. After a credit event is triggered, and it looks likely that it will be next week if collective action clauses are used in order to get maximum participation in the Greek bond swap, there will be an auction, again organised among dealers coordinated by Isda. Read more

Greece CDS: trigger sad

Lisa joined FT Alphaville in September 2011 after a tour of duty through the guts of the financial industry, having worked as an analyst at a bank and for a financial data company. She's now the Head of New Projects for FT.com.

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| Mar 01 2012 13:55 | Comment |

Shhhh! Be very, very quiet. The Isda Determinations Committee has been meeting to decide whether there’s been a restructuring Credit Event that would trigger payouts on CDS referencing Greece and we don’t want to spook them.

Or as the WSJ put it: Read more

Greece CDS: trigger happy

Lisa joined FT Alphaville in September 2011 after a tour of duty through the guts of the financial industry, having worked as an analyst at a bank and for a financial data company. She's now the Head of New Projects for FT.com.

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| Mar 01 2012 10:00 | Comment |

Jeez, guys, look, there’s going to be a credit event that triggers Greece CDS, ok? Or, at least, it seems highly likely. So, take a chill pill.

What, you don’t want to? Instead you want to submit another request to the Isda Determinations Committee to try to trigger the contracts? Fine, have it your way (click to expand): Read more

Will the Greece CDS auction be ‘fair’? — Part 2

Lisa joined FT Alphaville in September 2011 after a tour of duty through the guts of the financial industry, having worked as an analyst at a bank and for a financial data company. She's now the Head of New Projects for FT.com.

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| Feb 22 2012 17:39 | Comment |

The use of collective action clauses in Greek bonds, as part of the country’s sovereign restructuring, seems set to trigger credit default swaps. For the $3.2bn of net notional still outstanding on the contracts, it’s been a long road to a credit event.

In Part 1, FT Alphaville discussed how the next point of focus will be the performance of the auction that will determine the payout to protection buyers of the contracts. Read more

Will the Greece CDS auction be ‘fair’? — Part 1

Lisa joined FT Alphaville in September 2011 after a tour of duty through the guts of the financial industry, having worked as an analyst at a bank and for a financial data company. She's now the Head of New Projects for FT.com.

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| Feb 22 2012 17:11 | Comment |

Are you feeling relieved that the whole CDS trigger debate for Greece might be over? Well, you may have been relieved too soon. There may well be a big, nasty hitch.

A hitch involving how the credit event auction for Greece — where CDS payouts are determined — works. Read more

Mechanics

Lisa joined FT Alphaville in September 2011 after a tour of duty through the guts of the financial industry, having worked as an analyst at a bank and for a financial data company. She's now the Head of New Projects for FT.com.

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| Jan 11 2012 11:13 | Comment |

Since 2009 credit event auctions that determine credit default swap payouts have been hardwired into the operations of the market. Previously, auctions were arranged on a more ad hoc, voluntary basis.

Potentially billions hinge on the outcomes of this automatic mechanism. By eliminating voluntary participation, and by virtue of dealing with something as complicated as debt, both credit events and the auctions that follow have been subject to the occasional controversy. Read more

A necessary condition for growth

Lisa joined FT Alphaville in September 2011 after a tour of duty through the guts of the financial industry, having worked as an analyst at a bank and for a financial data company. She's now the Head of New Projects for FT.com.

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| Jan 09 2012 20:18 | Comment |

Credit event auctions determine what the ultimate payout is when credit default swap contracts are triggered by a “credit event” such as bankruptcy.

In a previous post, FT Alphaville explained why such auctions came to exist. Here we discuss why auctions were so important in helping the market grow to astronomical heights, particularly with regards to index trading, a segment that continues to boom. Read more

Why do they exist?

Lisa joined FT Alphaville in September 2011 after a tour of duty through the guts of the financial industry, having worked as an analyst at a bank and for a financial data company. She's now the Head of New Projects for FT.com.

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| Jan 05 2012 16:53 | Comment |

Credit event auctions are the means by which final payouts on credit default swap contracts are calculated. The importance of such auctions will increase as more and more defaults occur in the face of a global economic slowdown.

To the extent that CDS are used to hedge, rather than speculate, the outcomes of these auctions will dictate how effective the hedge has been. Read more