TruPS CDOs: What Virus?

While the rating agencies have been actively downgrading bonds across almost all sectors, we thought it may be fun to compare the performance of regional US banks during COVID-19 against their performance during the 2007-2008 financial crisis.

Bank TruPS CDOs are deals supported by trust preferred securities issued by regional/community banks.   Interestingly enough, since the onset of the coronavirus, the TruPS CDOs (if anything) have been going up from a ratings perspective.

Yesterday, Kroll Bond Rating Agency affirmed the ratings of a 2018 deal, without making any mention of the coronavirus.  Meanwhile in a series of (we count four) ratings releases since March, Fitch has upgraded dozens of tranches, and affirmed many others too. No downgrades, and no mention of COVID-19.

So why the upgrades?  The likely answer is that many of the upgrades have been lingering for a few years, and just had to happen at some stage, so why not now?

Here's one of the more interesting bonds, the $70mm top tranche (originally AAA) of a 2005 deal called Regional Diversified Funding 2005-1, which has seen both crises.  

Read the chart from the bottom up.  Pre-crisis, Fitch has it at AAA, until it was (rather dramatically) downgraded on a single day to CCC in 2009.  That's incredible.  Okay, fast forward and it's single C in 2010, Fitch's lowest rating: an expectation of full or almost full wipeout. 

Since it had gone from AAA (sacrosanct) to C (a dead-beat) it's just as incredible that it has since marched back up to CC (in 2015, of all times) and then CCC, BB and now A (as of yesterday), which is a serious investment grade rating.  

Nevermind the coronavirus!

Developments in FX and US Treasuries Litigation

An interesting week. Two developments emerged concerning possible behind-the-scenes activities in two of the largest markets – foreign exchange (FX) and U.S. Treasuries (bills, notes and bonds). 

The New York Department of Financial Services (NY DFS) fined Credit Suisse $135 million for FX wrongdoing. And plaintiffs in a class action alleging manipulation in the U.S. Treasuries market filed a new complaint with additional allegations.

ForEx

The NY DFS consent order presents its findings that Credit Suisse engaged in a myriad of transgressions in the FX market – including: 

• Efforts to manipulate prices around the “fix” and improper sharing of customer information with traders at other banks, e.g.: 
• "... Trader 1 discussed with Trader 4 an effort to “unload” ammunition. Trader 1 stated “get ready unload on nzd,” to which Trader 4 replied, “I am. Nearly hit it last time.” As the fix drew near, Trader 1, referring to an unidentified co-conspirator, remarked “if he can’t get it lower we may be in trouble.” After apparent success, Trader 1 remarked “come to poppa,” while Trader 4 retorted, “phew.” "
• Attempts to front-run customer orders, e.g.: 
• " In one instance in February 2013, a Credit Suisse trader, Trader 1, disclosed potentially confidential information obtained from the Credit Suisse sales desk about FX trading associated with a pending merger and acquisition: “I think there’s some lhs2 action today at the fix on the back of tht massive m+a . . . massive caveat, info is from sales desk . . . but 4 o clock. . . . 16 yrds . . . something to do with the equity leg is going thru today . . . that’s the reason they saying the spot will be done.” "
• Collusion with other banks to maintain wide bid-offer spreads
• Price manipulation on behalf of certain customers, e.g.: 
• " On September 7, 2012, a Credit Suisse customer (“Customer 1”) enlisted the assistance of a Credit Suisse trader, Trader 18, in seeking to push down the price of the U.S. dollar/Turkish lira pairing. Customer 1 asked Trader 18, “can you walk down usdtry for me pls.” Trader 18 replied, “Yeah, no problem.” Customer 1 then stated, “just offer 1 at like 72 . . . just walk it brotha,” to which Trader 18 replied, “No sweat.” Customer 1 cheered on Trader 18, saying “come on . . . just walk it,” to which Trader 18 replied, “Collapsado.” Apparently upon achieving success, Customer 1 stated, “thks [Trader 18] for walking it down . . . great job . . . you really shellacked it.” Trader 18 quickly replied, “pleasure.” "
• Abuse of last look via its electronic platform
• Deliberately triggering (and front-running) customer stop-loss orders

This last item is particularly noteworthy – not because Credit Suisse is the first to be accused of intentionally triggering stop-loss orders (it’s not), but because the bank apparently wrote an algorithm to calculate the likelihood of successfully triggering stop-loss orders that were potentially ripe for targeting.  In so doing, the bank seems to have systematically developed a system for deciding which stop-loss orders to target.

The penalty imposed by the NY DFS is the first FX-related regulatory fine imposed against Credit Suisse. In contrast, Swiss competitor UBS has settled with the CFTC, Federal Reserve, FINMA (Swiss regulator) and FCA (UK regulator), as well as class action plaintiffs in the U.S. and Canada, for a total of nearly $1.3 billion. 

U.S. Treasuries 

In the consolidated complaint, styled In Re Treasuries Securities Auction Antitrust Litigation (1:15-md-02673), plaintiffs indicate that they have evidence in hand, such as chats and emails, which shows bank traders sharing customer order information with traders at other banks (but by our reading they don't seem to have produced said evidence). 

According to the complaint: 

“Plaintiffs have obtained documents relating to the DOJ’s ongoing investigation, which confirm that such trader communications occurred. These materials include online chat transcripts in which the Auction Defendants shared the identities (often using code phrases) of their indirect bidder customers, the details of those customers’ order flow, and other private customer information.” 

Interestingly, plaintiffs have broadened the scope of the complaint, to include wrongdoing in the secondary market.  Plaintiffs allege, anew, that dealer banks have conspired to boycott trading platforms that would enable market participants to trade with each other on anonymous all-to-all platforms, such as eSpeed and Direct Match: the theory being that all-to-all trading platforms could be a threat to the status quo of dealer dominance of the secondary trading market, potentially putting dealer trading revenues at risk. 

The boycotting allegations are similar to those made against interest rate swap and credit default swap dealers in cases such as In Re Interest Rate Swaps Antitrust Litigation (1:16-md-02704) and Tera Group, Inc. et al v. Citigroup, Inc. et al (1:17-cv-04302).


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For more detailed coverage of these matters, visit our piece here.

You Can’t Do That On Chat!

Since the global financial crisis, all sorts of investigations have gone on in the financial markets, and some very interesting chats have been made public. We're collecting some of the more saucy IMs and phone calls here, in their original form (with spelling errors retained):

UBS [Trader A]: and if u have stops….

UBS [Trader A]: oh boy

Deutsche Bank [Trader B]: HAHA

Deutsche Bank [Trader B]: who ya gonna call!

Deutsche Bank [Trader B]: STOP BUSTERS

Deutsche Bank [Trader B]: deh deh deh deh dehdehdeh deh deh deh deh dehdehdeh

Deutsche Bank [Trader B]: haha16 

June 2011 | electronic chat (likely) | Product: Silver Futures | Deutsche Bank & UBS

In re London Silver Fixing Ltd Antitrust Litigation Proposed 3rd Amended Consolidated Complaint

Trader to prospective cartel member: “mess this up and sleep with one eye open at night.”

2011 | electronic chat | Product: FX (one month trial to join "cartel") | Barclays | Link

(Future) Co-Head of UK FX Hedge Fund Sales: “markup is making sure you make the right decision on price . . . which is whats the worst price i can put on this where the customers decision to trade with me or give me future business doesn’t change . . . if you aint cheating, you aint trying.”

Nov. 2010 | electronic chat | Product: FX | Barclays | Link

Broker-B (non-UBS) to Trader-1: “mate yur getting bloody good at this libor game . . . think of me when yur on yur yacht in monaco wont yu”

June 2009 | electronic chat | Product: LIBOR | UBS | Link

Employee 1 to Employee 2: “[We] can’t mark any of our positions [to market price], and obviously that’s what saves us having this enormous mark to market. If we start buying the physical bonds back then any accountant is going to turn around and say, well, John, you know you traded at 90, you must be able to mark your bonds then.”

June 2007 | telephone chat | Product: RMBS/CDOs | AIG | Link 

Analyst #1: Btw (by the way) that deal is ridiculous. 

Analyst #2: I know right…model def (definitely) does not capture half the risk. 

Analyst #1: We should not be rating it. 

Analyst #2: We rate every deal. It could be structured by cows and we would rate it.

April 2007 | electronic chat | Product: RMBS/CDOs | S&P | Link

Trader-10: “Good morning [Submitter-4], [Trader-10] here.. could we please ask you to put in low 1m fixing pls”

Submitter-4: “Difficlt, think [Senior Manager-6] wnarts it [] on the high side”

Trader-10: “Oh no!! But ladies first no ;))?”

Submitter-4: “First come first serve.”

Trader-10: “Exctly.. And we have been begging you for last two month!!”

Submitter-4: “But u dont sign my bonus right?”

Trader-10: “Hahah hmmm.. Unfortunately not...”

Oct. 2005 | electronic chat | Product: EURIBOR | Deutsche Bank  | Link

Trader 3: “LOWER MATE LOWER !!”

Submitter 1: “will see what i can do but it’ll be tough as the cash is pretty well bid,”

Trader 3: “[Bank A] IS DOIN IT ON PURPOSE BECAUSE THEY HAVE THE EXACT OPPOSITE POSITION – ON WHICH THEY LOST 25MIO SO FAR – LET’S TAKE THEM ON.”

Submitter 1: “ok, let’s see if we can hurt them a little bit more then.”

Sept. 2005 | electronic chat | Product: LIBOR | Deutsche Bank | Link

Trader: “I was front running EVERY single offer in usdjpy and eurjpy.”

  …

Trader: “call me a legend! Front run legend.”

  …

Trader: “jamming some stops in eurusd here at 0515”

  …

Trader: “the day of intervention, i was front running EVERY SINGLE ODA and I mean EVERY haha” 

Dates unknown (multiple) | electronic chats | Product: FX | UBS | Link

All the Equity Research Analysts in the House say "ABB, ABB"

Alec Baldwin instructed his henchmen in Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) to "ABC."  Always Be Closing.

ABC  v  ABB

If he were a research analyst at a bank, he would have told his client-customers to "ABB."  Always Be Buying.  He would also have told them that he's, you know, objective and conflict-free, and maybe just a little bit optimistic.  So cummon, buy.  And trust me, I'm conflict-free.

This all sounds a little bit ridiculous of course, but it is the world of equity research.  It pays big bucks to say Buy.  It sours relationships just a bit to say Stay Neutral.  It really sours relationships to say Sell.  And so the banks and their analysts generally say Buy.  You say Buy to almost everything, and every now again, thinking you're a genius and praying for your Meredith-Whitney moment, you say Sell and hope that the market will prove you right very very soon ... or who knows when you may find yourself out of a job.

We're exaggerating a little, but generally banks tend to rate something like 40-50% of the universe a Buy, 40-50% Neutral, and the small remainder Sell.  Here's an example of one bank's global distribution as of sometime in 2014.

And here's one of the reasons why.

6 months ago, JPMorgan announced it was downgrading Indonesian equities to “underweight.”  That's basically a call to Sell.  Booya!  Well, what happened next was that the market showed JPMorgan analysts to have been some sort of geniuses ... but the Indonesian government wasn't quite as enthusiastic.

2 months later, the Indonesian government terminated its business partnerships with JPM, including its status as a primary dealer and a panelist for dollar-bond offerings. Argh. According to reports, Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati would explain, when asked to comment on the termination of the JPMorgan relationship, that banks should take responsibility for economic reports that "could influence [market] fundamentals and [investment/investor] psychology".  Other reports have an Indonesian official explaining that JPMorgan's downgrade action could destabilize Indonesia’s financial system.  In short, "Show People the Optimism" ... or else No More Business for You!

2 weeks later, JPM had switched Indonesian equities back to Neutral.  This may not have been nefarious.  Sure, money speaks, but just look at how "right" the JPMorgan analysts have been!  They almost could not have hit the nail any straighter.  (Since the original downgrade, Indonesian stocks have underperformed the Emerging Market index by 4.6%; since the reversal to neutral, they have been on par just about perfectly neutral, with the difference being less than 0.1%.  Not bad for equity analysts!)

Bigger picture, however, is that we may never know to what degree business interests impacted any specific decisions.  But the bullishness of equity analysts, and the known conflicts, certain leave the analysis anything but objective and conflict-free.  (One solution is simply to disclose that the analysis is conflicted, rather than to constantly try to pretend it is objective.)

The broken-model of (bank) equity research is being revisited with the ongoing saga that is the Snap IPO, which priced in March at around a $24 billion valuation, only to move up to about $34 billion that day (roughly $25 per share).  A Bloomberg columnist found that:

• Analysts of 13 banks that were underwriters on Snapchat’s IPO have issued recommendations on the company’s shares. Among those analysts, 69 percent issued "buy" recommendations or the equivalent, with a median price target of $27, according to an analysis of Bloomberg data. (Meanwhile, without drinking the Kool-Aid ....)
• Of the 14 analysts whose firms didn’t work on the Snapchat IPO, only two (14 percent) said the company's stock was worth buying. The median price target among those unaffiliated analysts is $21 a share. 

Things became a little more embarrassing when it was reported that:

• On March 27, Morgan Stanley published an equity research note on Snap, the social media company it helped take public, putting a $28 price target on the stock. 
• Almost a day later, the bank issued a correction, changing a range of important metrics in its financial model but not the $28 price target. 

Apparently, the bank has found counter-balancing errors that allowed it to maintain the same price despite significant downward adjustments to projections.

One market commentator posed a novel theory that the market knows the price, and so the back-solving or reverse-engineering to obtain the known price doesn't make the research wrong.  But it makes us wonder ... if the goal of the research is simply to create some fancy model to justify a price that's pre-conceived, errr, what's the point?  And isn't the justification of a pre-conceived valuation misleading to the degree some of the customer-client-prospects thought is was an objective effort to analyze, you know, Snap's real and inherent value?  Of course, if it were a contest for American's Next Top Pricing Model, we would be all for producing the Sexiest Equity Pricing Solution ("SEPS").

The answer is known, of course.

The objective of equity research is to make money elsewhere in the bank, not to be smart and right, but to win (and maintain) banking business.  Equity research doesn't, alone, make money: it is given out freely to certain clients and prospects, with the expectation of revenues to be generated elsewhere, like in commissions on trades.  But if it's a free product, and its goal is to make money elsewhere, then as soon as it jeopardizes the external prospects, it becomes a burden. And the research analysts know when they're being a burden.  So they say Buy when they need to, and they say, sure, $28 dollars, the Price is Right, and boy do we have a super-model for you.  But independent and conflict-free analysis it is not.

Regulation AC tells us, essentially, that when research analysts tell clients to buy or sell a particular security, they must actually mean what they say.  But the product is sweetener.  It is quite helpful in selling the coffee.  And the coffee can't sell with a salt or pepper alternative. 

Not ... Just ... Yet ... Wells, Fargo

If Wells Fargo didn't already have enough to worry about, last week things got a little bit more “interesting” with the filing, against Wells, of a class action complaint filed by employee-participants in its $35 billion retirement plan.

Wells is busy dealing with the aftermath of its fake accounts scandal.  It has paid the CFPB a $185 million penalty, but the reputational fall-out is ongoing, as outsiders seem to show more empathy towards the (former) employees at the heart of the scandal, and less with the company itself. Hundreds if not thousands of Wells' employees were let go over a period spannin years, accused of fraudulently opening 2 million customer accounts ... enough to cost former Chairman and CEO John Stumpf his job.  He fell on his sword last month. 

Much has been made of  the culture at Wells Fargo that may have enticed (or even compelled) thousands of employees to conclude that it was better to conjure up fake customer accounts than to fall short of sales quotas, especially after some of the 5,300 workers fired for the scandal decided to sue for wrongful termination that they allege was in retaliatory.  (With a nod in Wells Fargo's direction, the CFPB put out a bulletin yesterday on "Detecting and Preventing Consumer Harm from Production Incentives.")

The complaint filed last week  alleges that Wells Fargo enriched itself at the expense of its employees by engaging “in a practice of self-dealing and imprudent investing of Plan assets by funneling billions of dollars of those assets into Wells Fargo’s own proprietary funds.” The plaintiffs argue that Wells Fargo’s proprietary funds, specifically its target date funds (which were a default investment option), charged higher fees than, and under-performed against, comparable funds. 

It is a familiar tune that we have heard from employee plaintiffs at other financial services firms, such as Morgan Stanley and Putnam Investments, two of several financial services firms recently accused of self-dealing through its employee retirement plans. Similar cases have already been settled (e.g. Ameriprise for $27.5 mm and Mass Mutual for $31 mm). Self-dealing asset managers are not the only alleged culprits – 2016 has seen at least two dozen lawsuits over retirement plan fees and offerings, including twelve by university employees.

Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune; licensed by PF2

A primer on the ERISA litigation can be found here.

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The case is: Meiners v. Wells Fargo & Company et al (16-cv-03981) 

More on issues of corporate culture at financial institutions, here

Bank Stress Tests and the Problem of Ignoring Reality

“Too large a proportion of recent "mathematical" economics are mere concoctions, as imprecise as the initial assumptions they rest on, which allow the author to lose sight of the complexities and interdependencies of the real world in a maze of pretentious and unhelpful symbols.”

                                                                                        - John Maynard Keynes

The 2011 European Bank stress tests were largely held in disregard.  They had managed to assume away the implications of a chief risk held by the banks being tested – that countries within the EU could default – culminating in several banks easily passing the tests, only to fail soon thereafter.

The results were released in July 2011, with Dexia and Bankia and the Cypriot banks passing and sometimes easily passing the tests. Dexia failed in October 2011. Bankia survived a little while longer, before being nationalized in May 2012. The Cypriot banks never triggered any kind of concerns among the key monitoring agencies, the EU, EBA, IMF or BIS, well, not before the Cypriot banking collapse.

The editorial board at Bloomberg View just put out a piece on why the US Fed's bank tests lack credibility.  Same problem, here: a lack of basis in reality:

"...the simulation [being run] is a far cry from what happens in a real crisis. It doesn't fully capture how contagion can afflict many of a bank's counterparties at once, magnifying losses many times over. It also assumes that a thin minimum layer of equity capital -- just $4 per $100 in assets -- would be enough to maintain the market's confidence in a bank's solvency. These flaws make a passing grade almost meaningless."

Reality is very different, and modeling behavior in a stressed environment is necessarily a different process from modeling a normal environment, as what was previously uncorrelated or even inversely correlated can suddenly become correlated ... as the economic principles break down and legal rules change.

We're not saying this is easy – but there's little comfort to be gained in performing a test if that test fails to capture the harsh reality that, in times of crisis, our (joint) behavior itself will compromise the predictive value of the theoretical process we're modeling.  

Perhaps a picture will say it best:

So You Think You Can ... Run a Bank?

You’re probably not alone in thinking you could have done a better job running one of the banks.  

Now you can see if that’s true, thanks to the Banking Simulator, a creative, educational tool designed by PF2 team member Joe Pimbley.  Like a flight simulator for pilots, it will give you a chance to hone your skills in simulated, but realistic, market conditions and risk scenarios.

Bank managers and executives use models for VaR, loss distributions, economic and regulatory capital, to help with decision-making, but of course those cannot capture the human element of a manager’s decision-making process during a downturn or in reaction to a “black swan” event.

Click on the slideshow for detailed instructions

In the Banking Simulator, you'll be playing the part of the bank CEO or CFO; you'll have to make many quarterly decisions and contend with several risks to keep your bank afloat in whatever situations we throw at you... including bank runs. You decide on the level of debt and equity to issue, and the amount of risky assets to acquire. You also decide the strength of your risk management.

You must make quarterly decisions to: 

• buy and sell risky assets
• issue deposits
• issue, redeem, and repurchase debt
• issue and repurchase equity
• pay dividends  

The simulator will show you your bank’s net income and stock price at the end of every quarter. You'll be encouraged to monitor and manage your asset-to-debt and reserve ratios, and you'll need to buffer against asset-liability or maturity mismatches.

Can you run a profitable bank, and at the same time maintain your reserve ratio, satisfy regulatory stress tests? 

Take your chances.  Let's see how resilient you can be, under changing market conditions.  Will you survive a run on the bank?

Rogue Bonds

We received a couple of calls late last week about the securitization structure (or catastrophe or "cat" bond) deal that Credit Suisse is preparing.

We haven't seen the deal docs, but from what we understand and have read, the concept is interesting:

Credit Suisse would free up some capital by insuring itself (by way of the bond sale) against certain operational risks, like fraudulent transactions, trade processing errors, regulatory or compliance shortcomings ... or the all-important concern of rogue trading, which caused JPMorgan and SocGen a pretty penny (just look up London Whale or Jérôme Kerviel).

We understand that CS would issue a two-tranche securitization, reportedly backed by a 700 million franc policy from Zurich Insurance Group.  Zurich would retain the first 10% of the risk, with the senior notes being sold off by way of a Bermuda vehicle.  From the reports we've seen, the senior notes would attach at losses of $3.6 billion and detach at losses of $4.3 bn. It's not immediately clear to us whether Credit Suisse would stomach losses above $4.3 billion, but that would seem unlikely ... we assume there's more to it than is publicly known at this time. 

Operational Risk, or What Credit Suisse Will

There are some serious questions.

It would seem Credit Suisse would have a massive informational advantage over the other side: they would know their operational strengths and weaknesses better than anybody else.   That's okay, as long as it's well understood.  

But the real questions start when there is a loss, 

Can one always put a value on the operational portion of the cost, easily separating out all of the factors?   Suppose for example that a loss is magnified as the market turns against a bank while it was slowly extricating itself from a large, unauthorized trade -- as happened in the case of JPM's London Whale?  Is that additional writedown the fault of the bank or the operational shortcoming?  How much of the supposedly unauthorized trade would have been "okay" and how much was "unauthorized"?  One issue here is that the party that knows best if probably Credit Suisse ... but it may often be a conflicted party, benefiting directly or indirectly through the decisions in makes in quantifying the losses.  

Next, the category of operational risk can be difficult to define, and items may fall in the grey zone. Might CS, knowing it has insurance, be more likely to categorize the marginal loss as operational?

And might it change Credit Suisse's approach to fixing up an issue to the extent it knows of certain insurance providers' interests or exposure?  At worst, knowing that they're insured, might they be less particular about buffering against the risk?  Could that create an adverse incentive from a cultural perspective? 

Banks might not need a second invitation!

If this all goes wrong ... we're insured!  Double down!  Lock and load!

Broker Order Routing, in a High Frequency Trading World

The brokers/dealers have had their fair share of scrutiny among the recent revelations in the high-frequency trading (HFT) saga.

Among the questions being asked are whether Brokers are routing orders to whichever venues pay them most handsomely for the flow ... and potentially not to whichever venue provides best execution for their clientele.

We previously covered the discount brokerage world in which TD Ameritrade is being sued

(see for example Gerald J. Klein, on behalf of himself and all similarly situated v. TD Ameritrade et al, 14-cv-05738) for their order routing decisions.

You may recall that shortly after New York's AG filed a complaint against Broker Barclays in June 2014 for issues relating to its dark pool, Broker Barclays saw a precipitous decline (of roughly 66%) in trading within its own dark pool.   Some of that has returned, but while the tide has turned and the "true" nature of trading activity in some of the dark pools has been revealed, others like Wells Fargo have had to shut their dark pools: each venue requires a certain amount of trading activity to be relevant, or advantageous.

Brokers' Routing Decisions - Where to Send the Trades

Today we're covering a little of what we've found in the brokerage world itself: the changing nature of Brokers' routing orders to their own dark pools. We're spent some time digging through order broker routing information in their quarterly Rule 606 reports, and found some interesting changes in the regularity with which some of the large brokers are routing "non-directed" orders -- orders for which the client hasn't specified a specific execution venue.

The data are sparse, and the time periods short, but it seems like Credit Suisse (which has the largest dark pool) is generally substantially increasing its order routing to its internal dark pool, while Goldies and Broker Barclays are generally decreasing their self-routing decisions.

Chicago’s Swap Contracts, Unfair Credit Ratings and a Way Out

In 2002, Warren Buffet called them financial weapons of mass destruction. In 2008, they triggered a severe national recession. And now, in 2014, they are jeopardizing the financial position of the City of Chicago. Like zombies who just won’t die, financial derivatives – put in place many years ago – now threaten to take a major bite out of the city’s reserves. Fortunately, new SEC rules may give Chicago the weapons it needs to ward off this financial Frankenstein.

Between 1999 and 2007, Chicago entered into a series of interest rate swap contracts with financial titans such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America. These swap contracts allowed the city to issue floating rate bonds while locking in a fixed interest rate - but they also locked the city into binding, long-term contracts, with the financial behemoths, that came with some unexpected risks.

The idea behind the swap contracts was appealing: the city treasury was protected from rising interest rates. At the time, no one knew that interest rates would fall to zero and stay there, obligating Chicago to pay hundreds of millions of swap payments to the major banks.

But there was a simpler alternative to issuing variable rate bonds and then offsetting the interest rate risk with swaps. The city could simply have issued more fixed rate debt. Traditional, fixed coupon bonds remain common in municipal finance and provide a straightforward way to lock in an interest rate.

The problem with simple solutions like fixed rate bonds is that they don’t generate a lot of income for financial intermediaries. In a 2011 testimony at an SEC hearing, financial expert Dr. Andrew Kalotay observed that swap advisers, pricing agents and attorneys all charge substantial fees for their efforts, while banks typically charge a 2% markup on swap transactions. In Alabama, $120 million in swap fees contributed to that Jefferson County’s 2011 municipal bankruptcy filing. Kalotay went on to observe that corporations never finance themselves with a combination of floating rate bonds and interest rate swaps. They apparently realize that this combination is a good deal for Wall Street banks – and not for them.

But excessive fees are not the only downside of these swaps contracts, as Chicago is now learning. Because swap contracts require cities to make payments to banks, they contain provisions that protect the banks in case a city becomes insolvent – as Detroit did.

In Chicago’s case, banks are protected by a clause that allows them to terminate the swap contract if the city is downgraded by Moody’s to a rating of Baa2. If the banks terminate their swap contracts under this provision, the city would have to immediately pay all the rest of the money it owes under the agreements – about $173 million according to Bloomberg.

Recently, Moody’s downgraded the city to Baa1 - one step above the accelerated termination threshold - while maintaining a negative watch. Thus Chicago is in real jeopardy of suddenly being obliged to pay a lump sum of almost $200 million to the major banks.

It is almost surreal when you think about it:  banks and credit rating agencies widely blamed for a financial crisis that happened six years ago still hold the power to seriously compromise the city’s finances.

But reforms enacted in the wake of the financial meltdown may be used to protect Chicago. Dodd Frank contained a provision requiring rating agencies to consistently apply their rating symbols. This “universal rating symbol” requirement was recently included in new SEC rule 17g-8.

There is ample evidence that rating agencies have discriminated against government bond issuers vis-a-vis other types of borrowers, including corporations and structured finance vehicles.  For example, thousands of AAA-rated mortgage backed securities failed to make complete and timely debt service payments in recent years, while no city or county rated single-A or above has experienced such a payment failure. Evidence of this discrimination was surveyed in a March 2014 comment letter from the Consumer Federation of America to the SEC.

In 2008, the state of Connecticut sued all three credit rating agencies for this discriminatory practice.  The case was eventually settled, with two of the three agencies agreeing to rescale their ratings in 2010. But this adjustment failed to fully address the ratings discrepancy and has been fully offset by subsequent downgrades attributed to pension underfunding.

Despite the many scare stories about public employee pensions, they have not played a major role in triggering municipal bankruptcies to date. In fact, since Detroit filed last July, no American city or county has initiated a Chapter 9 bankruptcy process. Moreover, most of the cities that previously filed – including Vallejo, Stockton, San Bernardino, Harrisburg and Detroit – did so because they faced some combination of declining revenue and deficient or negative general fund reserves. Pension obligations were, at most, a secondary issue.

Consequently, it is fair to argue that Chicago’s pension obligations do not justify its low ratings. Moody’s and other credit rating agencies should review Chicago’s ratings to ensure that they reflect the city’s real risk of defaulting over the next few years – which is miniscule. If Chicago’s ratings were properly rescaled, the city would no longer be on the verge of making $173 million in termination fees to the big banks.

Unlike today, the City of Chicago faced the real possibility of default in 1932. At that time, a large principal payment was coming due and the Depression-wracked city lacked the revenue needed to make it.  Back then, civic-minded bankers teamed up and worked overtime to find buyers for a new bond issue that allowed Chicago to roll over its debt and avoid bankruptcy. Eighty years ago, financial leaders believed they had a role to play in helping their cities survive financial turmoil; today it seems that the financial industry regards municipalities as just another lucrative source of fee income.  

The Trading's Trailing Off

There's been some generally miserable news floating about about big bank trading levels.

In a Forbes article, the team at Trefis put lower trading revenues down to "an overall reduction in trading activity over the period (a temporary factor) and a reduction in total market size as a direct result of stricter regulations (a permanent factor)."

Meanwhile, a number of media outlets were quick to cover the fact that trading levels within Barclays' dark pool has declined an incredible 66% during the week ending June 30th, versus the prior week.

We investigated this a little further and found that the week ending June 30th was not a good one for any of the alternative trading systems (ATSs).  It's not necessarily (or only) that Barclays' former clients may have been aggrieved at certain claims or findings made public in the NY Attorney General's complaint filing against Barclays, as could be inferred from a strict reading of some of the coverage -- but that trading levels at ATSs declined generally, with overall trading levels off 25% across the board, and by a median of roughly 20% across all ATSs.  The numbers are still in the same region even if we control for smaller ATSs, by only looking at the 15 largest ATSs as measured by share-trading volume for the week ending June 9.

Banking pundits will be hoping this is only midsummer madness, or maybe due to interim distractions from the Football World Cup.  The week ending June 30th coincided with the final week of group games.

Anyhow, here are the numbers from our extraction of aggregated trade data reported by ATSs to FINRA pursuant to Rule 4552.

FHFA RMBS Litigation Totals

From complaints (and amended complaints) and settlements we were able to string together this table of potential litigation costs that may be be borne by some of the major financial institutions who sold RMBS securities to FHFA -- based on a basic extrapolation of settlement expenses from the two data points that have been disclosed.  

This covers only RMBS purchase litigation -- not the mortgage repurchases, or "put-backs."  The totals potentially due to FHFA, on behalf of Fannie and Freddie, also ignore any potential settlements the FHFA might strike with other parties which they have not sued, like Wells Fargo. Numbers in the right-hand columns are in billions.

Analysis of The Shortcomings of Statistical Sampling in the Mortgage Loan Due Diligence Process

This is a popular litigation-related piece on our website we thought we'd share through this post (pdf version available here) - enjoy the read.



Introduction

Financial institutions, when assembling mortgage pools for the purpose of inclusion in residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS), often hire independent analytical companies, like Clayton Holdings LLC (“Clayton”), to perform due diligence on the loans and flag any that are problematic.

Leading up to the financial downturn, Clayton reviewed mortgages for its clients - investment and commercial banks and lending platforms, including those of Bear Stearns, Barclays, Bank of America, C-Bass, Countrywide, Credit Suisse, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Doral, Ellington, Freddie Mac, Greenwich, Goldman, HSBC, JP Morgan, Lehman, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Nomura, Société Générale, UBS and Washington Mutual (the “Issuers”). As such Clayton was purportedly one of the larger due diligence companies that analyzed whether these loans met specifications like loan-to-value ratios, credit scores and the income levels of borrowers.

Clayton describes, in the presentation it provided to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (“FCIC”), the results of its review of a total of 911,039 mortgage loans between Q1 2006 and Q2 2007 ₁. As can be seen from the chart, of the loans shown to Clayton, Clayton determined approximately 72% of them to be in compliance, and 28% of them to be out of compliance with the standards tested, or “non-conforming.”

Upon determining that a loan failed to meet its guidelines, an Issuer (i.e., Clayton’s client) would have the ability to exercise their contractual right in “putting back” these non-conforming loans to the mortgage lenders – New Century, Fremont, Countrywide, Decision One Mortgage – rather than include them in securitizations.

The regulatory bodies, and the media, have concentrated heavily on the sizeable portions of non-conforming loans, and the lowering of underwriting standards throughout this period; but for this analysis, we concentrate on a more illuminating aspect of the way in which non-conforming loans ultimately found their way into the securitized RMBS pools.

There are at least two ways that non-conforming loans can find their way into the securitizations:

• First, the Issuer may choose to waive the loan back into the pool, despite its being originally rejected by Clayton.

• Second, a more overwhelming mechanism, is to not show the loan to Clayton.

The Intricacies of Loan Sampling

Importantly, it seems to have been common practice for Issuers to show only a sample of the loans to Clayton. A sample risks being unreflective of the population of loans, but random sampling can provide an effective statistical approximation under very strict conditions. It can be a cheaper process and, if the sample is well chosen, can accurately reflect the pool.

The objective of sampling is satisfied if the randomly-selected sample is sufficiently large, and is deemed to be in order. Alternatively, if the sample fails to meet expectations, the entire portfolio ought to be revisited. However, in the mortgage due diligence process the samples were often deemed to be problematic – they resulted in an average of 28% of loans failing their criteria. Importantly, the samples were then adjusted, as we understand it, but the original portfolios were not: the Issuers would only put back certain non-conforming loans from that sample.

In this case, the resulting sample, after throwing out certain non-conforming loans, fails to accurately depict the remaining portfolio of loans it was chosen to represent.



How the Sampling Process Worked, and Difficulties Therewith

Former President and COO of Clayton, D. Keith Johnson, explained to the FCIC committee, during their hearing of September 2010, that in the 2004 to 2006 time period, sample sizes went down to the region of two to three percent₂. As the sample size decreases, which it did, the effect of the sampling process alone begins to undermine the effectiveness of the due diligence process.

The media have focused their attentions on what happened to the 28% non-conforming loans – the slices in red in the associated charts. Indeed, many of these non-conforming loans, approximately 39%, were not “kicked out” or put back to the mortgage lenders, but were “waived” back in to the to-be-securitized portfolio. This 39% is substantial, and a factor worthy of the media’s attentions.

But the game-changing fact is not among these 28% non-conformers, or the 39% of them which remained in the securitized pool. These are only part of a sample, and when the sample becomes insignificantly small, its overall contribution to the portfolio as a whole is rendered less meaningful. Rather, it is more prudent to consider the composition of the pool as a whole.

For illustrative purposes, let us assume that the sample loans shown to Clayton represented 3% of the pools, on the higher end of those referred to in the abovementioned Johnson hearing. Let us conservatively assume that the sample provided to Clayton was truly randomly selected.₃

For a pool of 10,000 loans, Clayton would have been presented with approximately 300 loans, or 3%.

As we can see from the analysis performed, the effect of “throwing out” 61% of all non-conforming loans is marginal: the pool’s overall composition decreased only from 28% non-conforming to 27.67% non-conforming thanks to the due diligence process. Even had the Issuers returned all 84 non-conforming loans, the overall portfolio would not have been greatly altered –non-conforming loans would have declined from 28% to 27.16%.

When a random sample is tampered with, the final product, by definition, no longer represents the original pool. Here, the sample reflects that ultimately 89% of the pool is conforming and 11% are non-conforming (11% = 28% x 39%). But given the reality of the situation, with the original pool remaining status quo, in fact 27.76%, not 11%, of the overall pool was non-conforming, even after the put backs administered as part of the due diligence process.

A well-selected random sample can effectively capture the characteristics of a pool under certain conditions. But an altered sample seldom accurately reflects the original pool.



1 http://fcic-static.law.stanford.edu/cdn_media/fcic-testimony/2010-0923-Clayton-All-Trending-Report.pdf
2 http://fcic.law.stanford.edu/resource/interviews#J
3 course, the sample sizes used and the percentages rejected by Clayton will differ from Issuer to Issuer. So too will the waiver rate.

A Fair (Value) Solution

Hello readers, and a belated welcome to 2012!

In yesterday's FT Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit advocates for heightened transparency across the banking system, enabling an apples to apples comparison that “[clears] some of the obscurity that causes people to believe the system is a game rigged against their interests.”

He is not alone. Late last year, Barclays' Group Finance Director Chris Lucas called for greater transparency in the financial reporting of liability valuations. The concept, of course, is that transparency is desired by investors, once bitten, before they can again get comfortable investing in banks.

Pandit proposes a solution that involves creating a benchmark portfolio against which banks can measure their relative risk.

Asset valuation itself has become the number one concern for the SEC in 2011: through mid-December the SEC had, according to the WSJ, issued a total of 874 “comment” letters to 802 distinct companies concerning their fair valuation and estimation of assets and contracts. Meanwhile, audit firms PwC, KPMG, Deloitte and others have been criticized as to their oversight of their clients' valuations and valuation processes (see Contested Pricing List). And so it is not surprising that banks are trying to overcome these substantial hurdles, though understandably in ways that suit them best.

The problem here is akin to the one faced by technology companies: the evaluation of their patent portfolios is no mean feat and is highly subjective – yet it is a crucial component of their stock price, especially in an acquisition or dismantling process.

Pandit’s solution is one solution. Another is more arduous, but overcomes the dual problems of inconsistency and subjectivity. It also combats the material regulatory arbitrage gaming business that has been created to minimize capital reserves. We would be able to say good-bye to a whole business of utility-free resecuritizations, structured solely to game the ratings models to achieve, or manufacture, lower reserves. It would be the end of certain Re-REMICs and perhaps even AAA-rated principal protected notes.

The solution, of course, is to evaluate each and every bond. This is already being done (to an extent) by the NAIC, and would add stability and assurance to our investor base.

Asset valuation may be more art than science, especially in the world of illiquid assets – but at least it's not a game. If well-performed, it can provide the cross-company valuation consistency even our bankers are calling for.

But it won’t be cheap.

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For our Central Pricing Solution, click here.

Complexity is a Cash Cow (but not for you)

“Fortuna's wheel had turned on humanity, crushing its collarbone, smashing its skull, twisting its torso, puncturing its pelvis, sorrowing its soul. Having once been so high, humanity fell so low. What had once been dedicated to the soul was now dedicated to the sale.” – from John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces

Frank Partnoy, in his recent Financial Times commentary, makes the bold point that while “[most] for-profit companies are run for the benefit of shareholders … banks have been run more for the benefit of employees.”

Partnoy doesn’t delve too deeply into the basis for his claim, but he may well be alluding to the fact that traders were being financially rewarded for executing trades that brought short-term profits at the expense of long-term pain.

We have all heard about the Abacus case, where the bank was accused of siding with one client at the expense of others. (Goldman settled with the SEC for $550mm). In other cases it is argued that banks actually positioned themselves in direct opposition to their clients. Needless to say it doesn’t augur well from a long-term, shareholder value perspective for a bank to be adverse to its clients. Either the bank will suffer or its client will suffer.

From a corporate governance perspective one might argue that senior management failed to the extent its traders were not being compensated based on the long-term quality of their decisions, but rather on their short-term profits. In such a scenario, the traders would not have been incentivized, or forced, to consider the long-term benefits of strong client relationships. They would simply want to execute high margin, million dollar trades.

And hence the layering on of complexity, and the disappearance of transparency.

Complexity

Complex, opaque, private trades afford broker-dealing banks numerous short-term money-making opportunities.

First up, the lack of asset transparency (inability to see through to the asset’s support) and trading transparency (inability, due to the private nature of certain markets, to follow the money or the trading levels) makes it easier for banks to get away with manufacturing prices to their advantage, or taking advantage of comparatively unsophisticated (trusting) clients.

Jim Grant (founder of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer) posited in a recent Bloomberg interview that the world we live in “is a world of fake prices and of manipulated prices.” For liquid, traded securities like municipal bonds or US Treasuries, it is understandably quite difficult to massage the numbers; but for lesser-traded, or illiquid, assets price discovery can be cumbersome if not impossible, making price manipulation all the more feasible.

In Michael Lewis’ The Big Short, Scion Capital’s Michael Burry warns that “[whatever] the banks’ net position was would determine the mark,” and that “I don’t think they were looking to the market for their marks. I think they were looking to their needs.”

The lack of transparency, too, is entirely convenient to banks in the know: it creates numerous opportunities to profit at the expense of those with less information. We call this imbalance an "informational asymmetry." It may be very difficult to sell Apple stock at an above-market price to even the least sophisticated of investors: they can readily tell that the security ought to be valued lower. But when the security is complex and privately traded, and when the comparatively unsophisticated investors do not have the market know-how or savvy to model the deals, it can be much easier for a bank to "pull one over" on them. The Fed ponders the severity of this very advantage in its aptly titled report "Could Asymmetric Information Alone Have Caused the Collapse of Private-Label Securitization?"

Complexity also undermines the potential for investigative journalism (they cannot get access to the data or make a complex deal sound too interesting) and, more importantly, the ability for regulators to oversee the markets they regulate. The IMF in 2006 warned that “[while] structured credit products provide a wealth of market information, there remains a paucity of data available for public authorities to more quantitatively assess the degree of risk reduction among banks and to monitor where credit risk has gone.”

Investors would do well to acknowledge the incongruent incentives banks may have to add their complexity to their products. But as buyers, complex deals can be difficult – and expensive – to analyze, and cumbersome if not impossible to trade (out of) during times of heightened volatility.

Investors can push back when offered complex deals that don’t meet their interests – and they can strive to ensure that their rights to high quality information and transparent disclosures are upheld.

Complexity allows for high margin trades that elicit high profits, but sometimes on terms that are not commercially reasonable. And in times of high volatility, they tend to be accompanied by high bid-offer spreads. As always, it’s buyer beware.

Built to Fail CDOs 101: How Well Do You Know Your CDS Counterparty?

The Abacus CDO story of 2010 brought to the fore a worrisome scenario in which it could be argued that the arranging bank (Goldman Sachs) played two different roles at once, potentially serving one particular client (Paulson) at the expense of other clients (investors in the Abacus CDO). Goldman settled the case with the SEC for $550mm. What could be worse than participating in such a conflicted scenario? We are concerned that in a number of deals the arranging bank may have positioned itself directly against the CDO investors. In other words, the bank, like Paulson, may have been betting against its clients.


But first, let’s take a step back to explain how this all works…

A CDO is called a “synthetic CDO” when the underlying assets are “synthetically” referenced, rather than being held like physical corporate bonds. The underlying assets are often referenced by way of credit default swaps, or CDSs, and are called “reference obligations.” These CDSs may reference several types of asset classes, but in the synthetic CDO setting they typically reference either corporate debt or structured finance securities, such as commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS), residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS), or even other CDO tranches. In the Abacus deal, the reference obligations were credit default swaps struck on RMBS.

Instead of buying physical assets that pay coupons (when current), the synthetic CDO sells protection on a portfolio of reference obligations. Much like insurance contracts, the buyers of protection on each underlying CDS make periodic “premium” payments to the CDO in exchange for compensation if and when a default, or credit event, occurs with respect to the obligation being referenced.

The CDO’s immediate counterparty on each CDS – typically the arranging bank – often plays an intermediary role between the CDO and each of its CDS transactions. It buys protection from the CDO and sells protection to the end buyer. This layout allows for the CDO to focus solely on the counterparty risk (i.e., the risk that a party will fail to fulfill its obligations under the CDS agreement) of a single party – in this case the arranging bank – as opposed to that of each end buyer (of protection).



Ideally, this dynamic ought to create an environment in which the immediate CDS counterparty (the arranging bank) is neutral to the performance of the CDO as the bank is fully hedged (as long as end buyers do not default).[1]

The imposition of an intermediary CDS counterparty often masks the identity of the end buyers from those who invest in CDO notes, potentially rendering CDO investors unable to discern which parties are ultimately short their portfolio.

Goldman Sachs’s now famous Abacus CDO illustrates a serious danger that can arise from the above confusion. The argument could be made that had investors known that Paulson was the end buyer of protection on a significant portion of Abacus’ CDS portfolio, they may have reconsidered the prudence of their investment, and potentially shunned it.


Built to Fail, Profitably

But what happens if the arranging bank chooses not to off-load all positions to an end buyer? In other words, what happens if the bank retains some or all of the short exposures to the underlying reference obligations? Here, the end buyer of protection, and the immediate CDS counterparty are one and the same: the arranging bank. The bank is now effectively short the CDO.

For example, the plaintiff in re: Space Coast Credit Union vs. Barclays Capital et al argues that:

“[the] facts here leave no doubt there was clear intent to create a very large short bet through Markov against Mezzanine CDO risk”

and that:

the “Defendants were extraordinarily determined to stuff Markov [CDO] with Mezzanine CDO risk.”

Plaintiff argues that:

“most stunning of all, [the Defendant] was so intent on Mezzanine CDO failure that it custom-built $300 million of built-to-fail Mezzanine CDOs … that [the Defendant], through Markov, could then bet against.”

While we do not seek to verify the accuracy of their contention, we are keenly aware of the material conflict such a scenario would present: the arranging bank is short the securities, meaning it would be financially rewarded if those securities were to plunder. The bank would benefit from selecting poor-quality assets. At the same time, the arranging bank is selling CDO notes, supported by these assets, to its clients. If the assets fail, the bank profits at the expense of the CDO noteholders – its clients. If the assets perform well, the bank would suffer financially.

From a higher level fiduciary perspective, the bank’s financial motive would not be aligned with the well-being of its client. Nor would the bank be even indifferent to the performance of its client. Rather, the bank’s profitability would be in direct opposition to that of its client.


While their clients were losing money on the trade, how much were bank profiting?

Removing the time value of money and the default timing as inputs to the model, we can create a simple model to estimate the bank’s profits from this trade. The model assumes that 100% of the assets are synthetically referenced.

Suppose the total premiums being paid were P, and that a bank held the super senior swap, with attachment point AP. The higher the attachment point, the greater the potential for the bank to make money: if losses exceed AP, the bank's profits are capped, as the profits from its short positions mimic identically the losses from its super-senior position.





In dollar terms, suppose the deal is of size $1bn, with an average 1% credit premium (P) on the reference obligations and a super-senior attachment point (AP) of 50%.

Suppose for simplicity that all losses occur within the first year.

If losses (AL) are lower than 1%, say they’re 0%, the bank loses 1% x $1bn = $10mm. Thus, if the portfolio is well selected, the bank stands to loses up to $10mm.

But if the portfolio is poorly selected, and suffers losses over 1%, the bank cashes in handsomely. At 5% losses, the bank makes 4% of $1bn, or $40mm. At 50% losses, the super senior attachment point, the bank caps out at 49% of $1bn, or $490mm. (Profits are maxed out at the 50% AL level as, in this example, the bank holds the super senior swap.)

A bank can either lose up to $10mm for doing a really good job of diligently selecting good assets, or the bank can make as much as $490mm for selecting really bad assets. Would you expect any bank to do the former?

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[1] If anything, the CDS counterparty ought to have a slight preference for the continued performance of each CDS contract, as a default would cause settlement and thereby cut short any intermediation fees it may be earning as a middle-man.