Does the European Financial Stability Facility Bail Out Sovereigns or Banks? An Event Study

On May 9, 2010 euro zone countries announced the creation of the European Financial Stability Facility. This paper investigates the impact of this announcement on bank share prices, bank credit default swap (CDS) spreads, and sovereign CDS spreads. The main private beneficiaries were bank creditors. Furthermore, countries with banking systems heavily exposed to southern Europe and Ireland benefited, as evidenced by lower sovereign CDS spreads. The combined gains of bank debt holders and shareholders exceed the increase in the value of their banks’ sovereign debt exposures, suggesting that banks saw their contingent claim on the financial safety net increase in value.     

Did securitization affect the cost of corporate debt?

This paper investigates whether the securitization of corporate bank loan facilities had an impact on the price of corporate debt. Our results suggest that loan facilities that are subsequently securitized are associated with a 17 basis point lower spread than that of facilities that are not subsequently securitized. We consider facility characteristics that are associated with the likelihood of securitization and estimate the extent to which these characteristics are related to spreads. We document that Term Loan B facilities, facilities of B-rated firms, and facilities originated by banks that originate CLOs are securitized more frequently than other facilities. Spreads on facilities estimated to be more likely to be subsequently securitized have lower spreads than otherwise similar facilities. The results are consistent with the view that securitization caused a reduction in the cost of capital.     

Determinants of interest rate swap spreads

This study argues that an interest rate swap, as a non-redundant security, creates surplus which will be shared by swap counterparties to compensate their risks in swaps. This action in turns affects swap spreads. Analyzing the time series impacts of the changes of risks of swap counterparties on swap spreads, we conclude that both lower and higher rating bond spreads have positive impacts on swap spreads. We also derive a risk–spread relation to test if swap counterparties are firms with differential credit ratings. Since the risk allocation between swap counterparties varies over business cycles, hence this factor needs to be controlled. We conclude that (1) similar results hold if the business cycle factor is controlled and (2) swap spreads contain procyclical element and are less cyclical than lower credit rating bond spreads.     

Libor manipulation?

On May 29, 2008 the Wall Street Journal published an article alleging that several global banks were reporting Libor quotes significantly lower than those implied by prevailing credit default swap (CDS) spreads. While acknowledging that the “analysis doesn’t prove that banks are lying or manipulating Libor,” it nevertheless conjectures that these banks may “have been low-balling their borrowing rates to avoid looking desperate for cash.”In this paper we compare Libor with other short-term borrowing rates, analyze individual bank quotes, and compare these individual quotes to CDS spreads and market capitalization data during three periods: 1/1/07-8/8/07 (Period 1), 8/9/07-4/16/08 (Period 2), and 4/17/08-5/30/08 (Period 3). We find some anomalous individual quotes, but the evidence is inconsistent with a material manipulation of the US dollar 1-month Libor rate.     

An Explanation of Negative Swap Spreads: Demand for Duration from Underfunded Pension Plans

The 30‐year U.S. swap spreads have been negative since September 2008. We offer a novel explanation for this persistent anomaly. Through an illustrative model, we show that underfunded pension plans optimally use swaps for duration hedging. Combined with dealer banks' balance sheet constraints, this demand can drive swap spreads to become negative. Empirically, we construct a measure of the aggregate funding status of defined benefit pension plans and show that this measure helps explain 30‐year swap spreads. We find a similar link between pension funds' underfunding and swap spreads for two other regions.     

Market discipline and too-big-to-fail in the CDS market: Does banks' size reduce market discipline?

This paper examines market discipline in the credit default swap (CDS) market and the potential distortion of CDS spreads which arises when a bank is thought to be too-big-to-fail. Overall, we find evidence for market discipline in the CDS market. However, CDS prices are distorted by a size effect when a bank is considered to be too-big-to-fail. A 1 percentage point increase in size reduces the CDS spread of a bank by about 2 basis points. We further find that some banks have already reached a size that makes them too-big-to-be-rescued. While the price distortion for these banks decreases, the existence of banks that are considered to be too-big-to-rescue raises important new issues for banking supervisors.     

Understanding liquidity and credit risks in the financial crisis

This paper develops a structured dynamic factor model for the spreads between London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) and overnight index swap (OIS) rates for a panel of banks. Our model involves latent factors which reflect liquidity and credit risk. Our empirical results show that surges in the short term LIBOR-OIS spreads during the 2007-2009 financial crisis were largely driven by liquidity risk. However, credit risk played a more significant role in the longer term (twelve-month) LIBOR-OIS spread. The liquidity risk factors are more volatile than the credit risk factor. Most of the familiar events in the financial crisis are linked more to movements in liquidity risk than credit risk.     

Heterogeneous Agents and the Indifference Pricing of Property Index Linked Swaps

Swap spreads predicted by the traditional risk-neutral valuation models are much lower than the quoted market spreads for property index linked swaps (Patel and Pereira, Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, 36:5–21, 2008). This paper attempts to develop a utility indifference-based model for evaluating the reservation spreads of swap receivers and payers based on the principle of expected wealth utility equivalence rather than the traditional risk-neutral argument. Under the proposed model framework, this paper addresses the determination of the swap spreads. When the incompleteness of real estate markets and heterogeneity of representative agents are taken into consideration, it is shown that the agents’ risk preferences and heterogeneous beliefs about expected future property returns are the remarkable determinants for the swap spreads. Our model also identifies market power and the settlement rules in the event of counterparty default as important factors in determining the swap spreads. Our model provides a possible interpretation for the difference between the spreads predicted by the traditional models and the actual market spreads.     

Spreads, depths, and the impact of earnings information: an intraday analysis

For a sample of NYSE firms, we show that wide spreads are accompaniedby low depths, and that spreads widen and depths fall in responseto bigger volume. Spreads widen and depths fall in anticipationof earnings announcements; these effects are more pronouncedfor announcements with larger subsequent price changes. Spreadsare also wider following earnings announcements, but this effectdissipates quickly after controlling for volume. Collectively,our results suggest liquidity providers are sensitive to changesin information asymmetry risk and use both spreads and depthsto actively manage this risk.     

The dynamics of sovereign yields over swap rates in the Eurozone market

We explore the dynamics of the adjusted swap spread (calculated as the difference between the swap rate and sovereign yields over the credit default swap premium) in the Eurozone market by studying three markets simultaneously: 1) sovereign bonds, 2) credit default swaps (CDS), and 3) swap rates. We find a strong relationship between the markets. Specifically, based on the no-arbitrage argument, we show that the difference between the Euribor and Repo rates is a key driver of the adjusted swap spread. However, illiquidity premiums and systemic risk also play an essential role in times of economic stress and for less creditworthy countries. The findings also shed light on the recent negative swap spreads puzzle in the United States.     

Did the Market Signal Impending Problems at Northern Rock? An Analysis of Four Financial Instruments

The academic literature has regularly argued that market discipline can support regulatory authority mechanisms in ensuring banking sector stability. This includes, amongst other things, using forward‐looking market prices to identify those credit institutions that are most at risk of failure. The paper's key aim is to analyse whether market investors signalled potential problems at Northern Rock in advance of the bank announcing that it had negotiated emergency lending facilities at the Bank of England in September 2007. A further aim of the paper is to examine the signalling qualities of four financial market instruments (credit default swap spreads, subordinated debt spreads, implied volatility from options prices and equity measures of bank risk) so as to explore both the relative and individual qualities of each. The paper's findings, therefore, contribute to the market discipline literature on using market data to identify bank risk‐taking and enhancing supervisory monitoring. Our analysis suggests that private market participants did signal impending financial problems at Northern Rock. These findings lend some empirical support to proposals for the supervisory authorities to use market information more extensively to improve the identification of troubled banks. The paper identifies equities as providing the timeliest and clearest signals of bank condition, whilst structural factors appear to hamper the signalling qualities of subordinated debt spreads and credit default swap spreads. The paper also introduces idiosyncratic implied volatility as a potentially useful early warning metric for supervisory authorities to observe.     

The Default Risk of Swaps

We characterize the exchange of financial claims from risky swaps. These transfers are among three groups: shareholders, debtholders, and the swap counterparty. From this analysis we derive equilibrium swap rates and relate them to debt market spreads. We then show that equilibrium swaps in perfect markets transfer wealth from shareholders to debtholders. In a simplified case, we obtain closed-form solutions for the value of the default risk in the swap. For interest-rate swaps, we obtain numerical solutions for the equilibrium swap rate, including default risk. We compare these with equilibrium debt market default risk spreads.     

Bank accounting conservatism and bank loan pricing

This paper studies the effects of bank accounting conservatism on the pricing of syndicated bank loans. We provide evidence that banks timelier in loss recognition charge higher spreads. We go onto consider what happens to the relationship between spreads and timeliness in loss recognition during the financial crisis. During the crisis, banks timelier in loss recognition increase their spreads to a lesser extent than banks less timely in loss recognition. These findings are broadly consistent with the argument that conditional accounting conservatism serves a governance role. The policy implication is that banks timelier in loss recognition exhibit more prudent and less pro-cyclical loan pricing behaviour.     

Hedging credit: Equity liquidity matters

We theorize and confirm a new channel by means of which liquidity costs are embedded in CDS spreads. We show that credit default swap (CDS) spreads are directly related to equity market liquidity in the Merton [Merton, R.C., 1974. On the pricing of corporate debt: The risk structure of interest rates. J. Finance 29, 449–470] model via hedging. We confirm this relationship empirically using a sample of 1452 quarterly CDS spreads over 2001–2005. In the model, this relationship is monotone increasing when credit quality worsens. These results are robust to alternative measures of equity liquidity and other possible determinants of CDS spreads.     

The pricing of accruals quality in credit default swap spreads

We examine the association between accounting information risk, measured with accruals quality (AQ), and credit spreads, primarily measured with credit default swap (CDS) spreads. Theoretically, AQ measures the precision with which accruals map into cash flows. Better AQ implies a more precise estimate of future cash flows and, we predict, a reduction in credit spreads due to resulting lower uncertainty regarding the ability to meet debt interest and principal payments. In support of this hypothesis, we find a negative relationship between AQ and CDS spreads whereby better AQ is associated with lower CDS spreads. Additionally, we investigate the components of total AQ and find that innate AQ is more strongly associated with CDS spreads than is discretionary AQ. We further show that AQ moderates the market's pricing of earnings: the relationship between earnings and CDS spreads weakens as AQ worsens. Together, our results indicate that accounting information risk is priced in credit spreads and that the CDS market responds not only to the level of earnings, but the quality thereof as well.     

An Econometric Model of the Term Structure of Interest-Rate Swap Yields

This article develops a multi-factor econometric model of the term structure of interest-rate swap yields. The model accommodates the possibility of counterparty default, and any differences in the liquidities of the Treasury and Swap markets. By parameterizing a model of swap rates directly, we are able to compute model-based estimates of the defaultable zero-coupon bond rates implicit in the swap market without having to specify a priori the dependence of these rates on default hazard or recovery rates. The time series analysis of spreads between zero-coupon swap and treasury yields reveals that both credit and liquidity factors were important sources of variation in swap spreads over the past decade.     

央行间货币互换在金融安全网建设中的作用

近几年来,货币互换在双边金融合作中扮演越来越重要的角色。文章对此次金融危机后美联储与其他央行的货币互换、“10＋3”框架下的货币互换以及人民银行与其他货币当局进行的货币互换情况进行了回顾,并对央行间货币互换在金融安全网建设中的作用和风险进行了分析,认为在发挥货币互换传统功能的基础上,应更加突出其在构建全球金融安全网建设中的作用。     

The asymmetric effect of international swap lines on banks in emerging markets

This paper investigates the effect of international swap lines on stock returns using data from banks in emerging markets. The analysis first shows that swap lines by the Swiss National Bank (SNB) had a positive impact on bank stocks in Central and Eastern Europe. It then highlights the importance of individual bank characteristics in identifying the asymmetric effect of swap lines on bank stocks. Bank-level evidence suggests that stock prices of local and less-well capitalized banks as well as banks with high foreign currency exposures and high reliance on short-term funding responded more strongly to SNB swap lines. This new evidence is consistent with the view that swap lines not only enhanced market liquidity but also reduced risks associated with micro-prudential issues.     

Reprint of: The asymmetric effect of international swap lines on banks in emerging markets

This paper investigates the effect of international swap lines on stock returns using data from banks in emerging markets. The analysis first shows that swap lines by the Swiss National Bank (SNB) had a positive impact on bank stocks in Central and Eastern Europe. It then highlights the importance of individual bank characteristics in identifying the asymmetric effect of swap lines on bank stocks. Bank-level evidence suggests that stock prices of local and less-well capitalized banks as well as banks with high foreign currency exposures and high reliance on short-term funding responded more strongly to SNB swap lines. This new evidence is consistent with the view that swap lines not only enhanced market liquidity but also reduced risks associated with micro-prudential issues.     

Investor information and bank instability during the European debt crisis

Outside of financial crises, investors have little incentive to produce private information on banks’ short-term liabilities held as information-insensitive safe assets. The same does not hold during crises. We compare the information effects of different policy interventions. We measure information production using credit default swap spreads during the Global Financial Crisis and the European debt crisis. We study abnormal information production around major events and find that capital injections reduced abnormal information production while early European stress tests increased it. High levels of information production predict bank balance sheet contraction and higher government expenditures to support financial institutions.