Month: January 2016

A China bank contagion could blow up global markets

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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If the dark predictions are going to come true — that the market turmoil out of China will lead to “another 2008” — it will have to be a very different kind of crisis than the original.

Six months after sell-offs in Shanghai began to reverberate through markets worldwide, bond-rating agencies continue to rate Chinese banks’ credit as investment grade, suggesting that if China does lead the world into recession, it will be a different affair than the sudden, sharp downturn catalyzed by the collapse of Lehman Bros.

A measure of default risk used by Moody’s Investors Service puts the risk of any of the Big Four Chinese banks — Bank of China, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, China Construction Bank and Agricultural Bank of China — defaulting in the next year at no more than 1.5 percent, and for some as little as 0.5 percent, said Samuel Malone, director of specialized modeling at Moody’s Analytics, the economic forecasting and risk-modeling unit of Moody’s.

Even with nearly USD 11 trillion of assets and loans that reach into all sectors of China’s USD 10.3 trillion economy, for now, experts see little likelihood the banks themselves will be a problem; China’s largest banks are all controlled by a government that has the determination and resources to prop them up if necessary. And their ties to US institutions are narrow enough that bond-rating agencies don’t foresee anything like the financial contagion of 2008, when liquidity problems quickly spread from bank to bank and nation to nation as the extent of the mortgage crisis became clear.

“What’s happening in China is not comparable to what happened in the US, and I don’t think there will be a replay,” said Todd Lee, China economist for IHS Global Insight. “In the US, there was a risk aversion that caused a credit crisis. The difference is that the state can pretty much force the affiliated banks to lend.”

At CNBC’s request, Moody’s Analytics ran a computer model of the likely correlation between problems at China’s banks and the financial health of U institutions. Moody’s relied on a method called Granger causality, named for Nobel Prize-winning economist Clive Granger, which uses one set of data (in this case, market perceptions of Chinese banks’ risk) to predict another (the risk to US institutions) to determine the likelihood of default between US and Chinese banks. Some of its conclusions:

1) The default risk of the largest Chinese banks has risen since its historical lows in 2013 but remains below levels seen in the US before the financial crisis. The megabank with the highest risk score is the USD 3.36 trillion Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Malone said.

2) Large US banks do not appear to be vulnerable to China’s problems at this point, thanks in part to capital buffers they have built at regulators’ insistence since the 2008 crisis.

3) The two Chinese banks that most influence markets’ view of US banks’ health are the Bank of China and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Malone said, because historically, changes in their risk profile have preceded changes in market views of Western institutions more strongly than heir peers have. That’s why investors are likely to keep an especially close eye out for signs of trouble at those two institutions, he added.

4) Statistical measures of the connection between how markets see default risks at China’s banks, and how risky it believes US institutions are, hit a post-2008 low in mid-2015 but have risen modestly in the last six months.

5) Chinese securities firms, like Haitong Securities Ltd. and Huatai Securities, are bigger default risks than China’s commercial banks, Malone said. But they are much smaller: Haitong, the larger of the two, has only about USD 10 billion in assets. These firms’ risk has less influence on other financial institutions than do swings in market perceptions of the Big Four, he said.

“It’s one thing for a bank to be risky,” Malone said. “It’s another for it to be both interconnected with other banks and risky.”

To date, China’s banks have not experienced anything like the cataclysms that rumbled through US and European institutions between 2007 and 2009. Neither have their problems resulted in any significant shortages of credit: Retail sales in China rose 11 percent in December 2015, and housing sales have begun to rebound from an earlier dip.

The US financial crisis drove a near-50 percent drop in sales of new cars and trucks, and a collapse of the market for new homes, driven largely by unemployment fears and problems getting deals financed. Even seven years later, the mortgage market remains dependent on government-backed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, despite the hopes of Congress and the Obama administration to have turned over their role of providing financing to lenders to the private sector by now.

Neither are the biggest US institutions showing signs of worrying about their China exposures. Citigroup was the only Big Six US bank to discuss China in detail on its most recent conference call, saying it has about USD 20 billion in total exposures as of last Sept. 30 — about a third of that in government bonds and less than USD 9 billion of commercial loans. In October, JPMorgan Chase said it had only minor exposures to China’s markets to facilitate client trading.

That said, China’s banks are in worse shape than a year ago, by many measures. Reported loan delinquencies have risen to 1.59 percent of loans as of Sept. 30, up from 0.95 percent at the end of 2012, Moody’s Investor Service says. And critics have seized on banks’ decisions to classify fewer loans whose borrowers are more than 90 days late on their payments as non-performing, saying banks and the government are trying to paper over the extent of a fast-growing problem.

Moody’s Investor Service cut its outlook for China’s bank sector to negative from stable, on Dec. 11. It pointed to the loan-loss problems, as well as an increase in overall borrowing to 209 percent of gross domestic product, from 193 percent a year ago, that it says raises systemic risk.

But all four of China’s largest commercial banks, each majority-owned by the government, are still rated A1/Stable — six notches above speculative grade and higher than all six of the top U.S. banks, which are rated A2 or A3. Bigger problems lurk in smaller Chinese banks that are less systemically important, the ratings agency said.

Shoring up capital

Under the formulas used by Moody’s Investor Service, no major U.S. bank has more than a 0.25 percent risk of failure, Malone said. The four biggest U.S. commercial banks — JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo — had a total of $6.5 trillion in assets in mid-2015, according to the Federal Reserve.

China’s banks are mostly funded by deposits rather than the capital markets, said Grace Wu, an analyst for Hong Kong-based Fitch Ratings. That makes them less vulnerable to short-term twists in the mood of markets, she said. They also have loan-loss reserves, collectively, that are nearly twice as big as the amount of loans that are 90 or more days past due, according to Moody’s Investors Service.

Non-performing loans, at least for now, are still below levels reached in the U.S. in 2008, according to the World Bank. Lending, while growing even faster than China’s economy in recent years, has not been as obviously slipshod as anything that happened in the U.S. mortgage market, Wu said. Until recently, she added, 50 percent down payments were common for houses and apartments, even with China’s highly inflated property values. Even now, at least a 25 percent down payment is required for most mortgages. But authorities use the banks to fund policy objectives, from driving manufacturing growth to propping up stock markets, making it difficult to determine whether all of those loans and investments are as healthy as reported.

China’s banks also benefit from the explicit backing of the government there, in contrast to the U.S., where bank bailouts remain controversial seven years after the crisis. China’s central bank also has much more room to lower interest rates than does the U.S. Federal Reserve, which has set the target range for its key policy rate at 0.25 percent. The current Chinese base interest rate is 4.35 percent.

Perception vs. reality

To be sure, China’s banks could be in worse shape than markets think. The extent of the U.S. financial crisis was far from clear in early 2008, and contrarian investors had been warning of trouble signs in housing finance as early as 2005, just as skeptics at firms like CLSA and Macquarie Securities have argued in recent months that reported loan-loss problems at China’s banks far understate reality.

The problems China’s banks have are focused in manufacturing and wholesaling — and an increasing number of those borrowers are relatively small businesses, Moody’s said. That raises the risk that their problems are not well understood or that they could worsen.

But ratings agencies think China’s banking sector poses contagion risk for Western institutions only if the Chinese government loses the market’s confidence, Wu said. Fitch reaffirmed the government’s investment-grade bond rating last month.

“The moment people doubt the state’s ability to control the [financial] system, the more you have cracks in confidence,” Wu said. “It’s not that we’re not concerned. But the state has reasonable resources to contain that risk.”

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Mohamed El-Erian warns about a day of reckoning

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Allianz Chief Economic Adviser Mohamed El-Erian said Tuesday the world economy is at the end of the era of borrowing growth and profits from the future in the form of easy monetary policies.

“Either we validate the financial asset prices and growth faster, or alternatively we will slip into a global recession with financial disorder,” El-Erian told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” He put a timetable of about three years on the outcome.
“The path we’re on right now — and that we’ve been on for a while— is ending,” the former Pimco co-CEO said, advocating central banks step back and allow economies to determine their own futures.

“There is nothing predestined about where we end up. We are heading toward this ‘T-junction’ and we can still take the right road,” El-Erian said.

The Federal Reserve took the first step, hiking US interest rates in December for the first time in more than nine years.

But El-Erian said the Fed waited too long to begin exiting from emergency polices designed to boost the economy after the 2008 financial crisis.

“They were waiting, waiting, and waiting, and irony is that the economy has healed, but it is not unleashed,” he said.

“The notion that we’re going to get four hikes this year is divorced from reality. I think, at most, we get two,” El-Erian said, predicting a “very shallow path” higher for rates.

Fed policymakers begin their two-day January meeting Tuesday.

With the other central banks around the world easing their monetary polices, El-Erian said the “only shock absorber” is the currency market.

“There’s volatility. We better get used to it, because that is the story of 2016,” El-Erian added.

He said central banks are out of ammo and growth remains slow. “We have fewer, if any, spare tries. And the road is getting really bumpy. I’m not sure I want to be in that car,” he continued. “So we better do something about that now.”

Against that backdrop, he advised investors to hold 20 to 25 percent in cash. “You need the optionality of that cash gives you.”

El-Erian reiterated the three areas that he sees as unhinged: junk bonds, energy and emerging markets. “There’s massive opportunities, but you have to be patient.”
“Part of the public markets are starting to look attractive. But you have to be careful because there’s a lot of volatility and contagions ahead,” he said.

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China, market turmoil may steer Fed off its course

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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The US Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) is in the midst of a two-day policy meeting after flagging off a historic interest rate hike cycle in December but a slowdown in China and convulsions in global markets could steer it off its course later this year.

After all, the Chinese equity and currency markets have had a rocky start to the year and the world’s second-largest economy is growing at its slowest pace in 25 years. Meanwhile, crude oil prices have plunged to fresh 12-year lows below $30 a barrel, prompting fears of a global recession.

That presents an inclement backdrop for the Fed, whose projections imply four interest rate increases this year.

“The main thing to look out for this week is how much emphasis (the Fed is) going to put on international developments; I think they will highlight these issues again like how they’ve done occasionally in the past and I think that will bring market expectations down to somewhere like one more (rate hikes) this year, maybe two,” said Jesper Bargmann, Nordea Market’s Asia trading head.

“They will mention something (about) the global economy affecting the U.S. economy.”

A small group of influential investors have spoken about the likelihood of the Fed reversing course including Ray Dalio, founder of the world’s largest hedge fund.

Jeff Gundlach, widely considered to be one of the world’s most influential bond investors, Tuesday said the Fed risks humiliation if it doesn’t dial back on its plans to aggressively tighten monetary policy.

As no press conference is scheduled after the meeting, FOMC’s statement will be scrutinized for both implicit and explicit messages.

The last time the Fed mentioned concerns and elaborated on external conditions was in September last year. Financial markets in the run up to that meeting had been rocked by China’s move to devalue the yuan, a move that fanned fears over the health of the Chinese economy.

Then the Fed said specifically then that it was “monitoring developments abroad” and that “global economic and financial developments may restrain economic activity somewhat and are likely to put further downward pressure on inflation in the near term.”

The move prompted criticisms from some quarters who said it was inappropriate for the U.S. central bank to react to broad financial market turmoil as the focus should be the country’s growth and labor markets.

Even so, the Fed is likely to remain sensitive to the global macro-environment, although that is unlikely to derail its path, said DBS’ senior FX economist, Philip Wee. The house is expecting four Fed rate hikes this year.

“We do think it will more sensitive to what’s happening around the world with regards to low oil prices, the other central banks toning down inflation expectations and of course, the volatility involving China,” said Wee.

Nomura analysts said in a report last Friday (January 22) that they expect the Fed to acknowledge the volatility in the financial markets this year but do not expect it to change key policy language.

“There’s no way they’re going to try to have any reversal of policy. From their point of view, markets are volatile when you start any rate hike cycle…that’s no reason to stop…The bulk of (the U.S.) economy is doing really well,” said Bank of Singapore’s chief economist, Richard Jerram.

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US banks keep trimming branches, cutting jobs

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Most US consumer banks are cutting jobs and trimming branches.

Bank of America and Citigroup reduced headcount the most, eliminating about 20,000 staffers between them, according to fourth-quarter earnings reports from each bank. The respective moves amount to 4.6 percent and 4 percent fewer workers at the banks. JPMorgan Chase reported in its earnings that it employs 6,700 fewer workers than a year ago.

The banks also reduced the number of branches.

JPMorgan has 3.4 percent fewer branches (5,413 branches and about 235,000 staff at the end of 2015); much of the bank’s headcount reduction came from its consumer and community banking division and within investment banking.

Bank of America operates 129 fewer “financial centers,” (2.65 percent) according to its earnings report; and Citigroup ran 4 percent fewer branches at the end of 2015 versus the previous year.

Often, a bank reducing headcount is a sign of layoffs and firings, but it may also be a reflection of attrition and the departure of seasonal labor.

Wells Fargo didn’t trim headcount; the best-performing consumer bank stock since the global financial crisis instead bolstered its ranks slightly, adding about 200 employees, growing to 264,700 full-time staffers. The bank, which today operates about 8,700 branches, didn’t specify whether it has added or shuttered brick-and-mortar locations in 2015.

Although more tellers have gotten pink slips in the last 12 months, compliance professionals are coveted even when banks are scaling back elsewhere.

Citigroup has increased its headcount in compliance and regulatory pros, according to a rep for the bank, and Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf said his bank is “spending a lot of money in compliance … also a lot of money on items and issues and things that create convenience for customers,” like mobile apps.

While big consumer banks are scaling back headcount, in part thanks to their ability to perform more functions for customers online, investment banks are bolstering their ranks.

Despite reducing 25 percent of its headcount within its underperforming fixed income and commodities business, Morgan Stanley added jobs over the course of 2015. The bank hired more than 400 staffers, according to its earnings report, bringing headcount to 56,218. But going forward, it doesn’t sound like the bank’s focus will be on hiring.

“Now is the time to tackle head-on our infrastructure costs and maximize low-cost deployment of talent,” CEO James Gorman said on the bank’s conference call last week. “We have too many legal entities, too much duplication of operations and processes, and too many employees based in high-cost centers doing work that can sensibly be done in lower-cost centers.”

The bank declined to comment on staffing for specific businesses.

Goldman Sachs added even more staff on a percentage basis than Morgan Stanley did.

Goldman took on about 2,800 additional staff in 2015, or an 8 percent hike from the headcount tally of 36,800 for the fourth quarter of 2014. CFO Harvey Schwartz said on the company’s conference call that the bank increased staffing in compliance, technology and investment management divisions. Reports preceding Goldman’s earnings said the bank, which is smaller by headcount than its Wall Street counterparts, would cut back on fixed income traders.

“Headcount is up 8 percent this year and compensation benefits were flat, so we’ve done a pretty good job at this stage,” Schwartz said on the bank’s conference call. “We will always look to be more efficient, but I think we chopped a lot of wood here.”

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Twitter CEO confirms exit of 4 ‘phenomenal’ execs

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey has confirmed the exit of a large swath of the company’s leadership team, including product head Kevin Weil and media boss Katie Stanton.

In a tweet late on Sunday ET, Dorsey said he had hoped to talk to Twitter employees later in the week about the departures, but that given the “inaccurate press rumors” about the departures, he wanted to set the record straight.

“I’m sad to announce that Alex Roetter, Skip Schipper, Katie Stanton and Kevin Weil have chosen to leave the company,” Dorsey said in an elongated “Tweenjoy” tweet, adding that “all four will be taking some well-deserved time off.

I’m personally grateful to each of them for everything they’ve contributed to Twitter and our purpose in the world. They are phenomenal people!”

Roetter ran the company’s engineering business and Schipper was vice president of human resources.

The upheaval on Twitter’s executive team — it is the biggest since Dorsey returned as interim CEO in July, was first revealed by Re/code, and quickly followed by other media.

Soon afterward, Jason Toff, who ran the Vine video streaming service, and who was among those departing, tweeted a “personal update” that he was “joining Google to work on VR.” Toff added: “The decision to leave Vine was hard.”

In his tweet, Dorsey said that the company’s chief operating officer Adam Bain would take on responsibility for all revenue-related product teams as well as the media and human resources teams on an interim basis, while chief technology officer Adam Messinger would take on oversight of engineering and consumer product, design and research, user services and Fabric, Twitter’s mobile development platform.

Dorsey said that he would partner with Messinger “day and night to make sure we’re building the right experiences.”

In its report, Re/code wrote that it had been a “very hard time” for all top executives at Twitter, as the company struggles to regain its growth momentum.
UPDATE 5-Top Twitter executives to leave company, CEO Dorsey tweets

There has been speculation Twitter could be bought, and turnover on the board is expected next quarter, the report said.

Twitter, which has just over 300 million users, had its slowest user growth in 2015 and was eclipsed by photo-sharing app Instagram, owned by Facebook, which surpassed 400 million users last year.

Since his return, Dorsey has launched Moments, a product developed by Weil, which showcases Twitter’s best tweets and content, laid off 300 workers and hired former Google executive Omid Kordestani as executive chairman.

“The timing of the exec changes is interesting, too, since Twitter is set to hold an executive retreat this week in San Francisco with the company’s top brass,” Re/code added.

Twitter’s stock has lost almost 23 percent in the year to date and is down more than 54 percent on this time a year ago. The shares closed at $17.84 each on Friday.

Disclosure: CNBC’s parent NBC Universal is an investor in Re/code’s parent Revere Digital, and the companies have a content-sharing arrangement.

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KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Larry Summers: Don’t expect four Fed hikes in 2016

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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The dismal start to financial markets this year, coupled with concerns about the slowdown in China, should keep the Federal Reserve from raising interest rates four times in 2016, as policymakers had forecast last month, former Clinton administration Treasury Secretary Larry Summers said Monday.

Summers also warned on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that psychology in volatile markets can change quickly. “Just as I thought it was a mistake to overreact to bits of strength in the middle of last fall, there’s also a danger to overreacting to the weakness at present,” he said.

Read More: What you need know about the markets this week

The Fed raised rates in December for the first time in more than nine years . At the time, central bankers projected four more rate hikes in 2016, but the new year market turmoil has scaled back those expectations.

“I’ve thought consistently that it was not a confident bet that the economy could withstand four rate increases this year, and continue to growth robustly and continue to provide support for a very weak global economy,” Summers said. “Certainly the way markets have moved this year has done nothing but support the view.”

“The markets have never believed the Fed on the Fed’s expansion [on rates],” he argued. “I think the Fed has quite been very unwise when it has criticized markets for not believing it because … markets reflect the collective judgment of a number of people. It seems to me there was substantial grounds for concern.”

Read More: This economic doomsayer sees plenty more volatility

Appearing with Summers, former European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet said it’s appropriate for the US and Europe to be moving in different directions on monetary policy because the euro zone economy remains much weaker.

“The [economic] cycle in Europe is very late in comparison to the cycle to the United States of America,” Trichet said. He estimated a three-year lag in growth and inflation in Europe, compared with the recovery in the US.

Summers expressed concern about the divergence of US monetary policy from the rest of the world. “You may see the main impact of monetary policies work through currency values. And that would be a problematic thing … for the American economy because it would represent a substantial shifting of demand abroad,” he said.

Last week, the ECB signaled the possibly of further easing, which helped to put a floor in on global financial markets.

Trichet, expressing more hawkish views than Summers, said Monday the Fed was “probably right” to hike rates in December because the American labor market is close to full employment.

Trichet is a member of Pimco’s global advisory board chaired by former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke.

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KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Iranian president Rouhani begins 4-day European visit

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has arrived in Rome on the first European visit by an Iranian president in almost two decades, following implementation of a landmark deal on curbing Iran’s nuclear activities.

Rouhani, eager for foreign investment after the lifting of international sanctions, started the four-day trip to France and Italy on Monday. The trip was originally planned for November but postponed by the attacks in Paris.

He met first with Italian President Sergio Matterella, and is scheduled to meet later with the Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and Pope Francis at the Vatican. In France, he is to be welcomed by French President Francois Hollande.

Europe was Iran’s largest trading partner before the sanctions, and a range of business and trade deals is expected.

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Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

As mobile internet soars in India, so do valuations: Sequoia

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Banking’s ‘Uber moment’ is a ‘big threat’

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow