Case Study – CDO INNOVATIVE BALANCE SHEET RISK MANAGEMENT: VALUE CREATION? 1) Just what CDO? Who have buys CDOs? CDOs can be a type of advantage backed reliability composed of you possess issued by special goal vehicles (a corporate entity that holds the resources as security, packages them and provides the producing notes to investors). Normally, the you possess issued happen to be divided into tranches with different risk characteristics and debt ranking. Each tranche carries a diverse rating which in turn determines the eye and cash flow for each part.
There are several types of actual assets that the special vehicle can buy.
The most typical are corporate bonds, corporate loans, trust preferred stocks and options, mortgage-backed investments and commercial real estate a genuine. Those described above will be conventional CDOs. Banks likewise created artificial CDOs. The main characteristic is usually that the credit risk is transmitted by a derivative (credit standard swap, normally) but the beginning bank keeps the underlying pool of assets inside the balance sheet. However, with synthetic CDOs credit risk is definitely transferred plus the originating lender obtains a crucial relief in capital requirements.
There are several investors interested in ordering CDOs. The motivations for all those investors are very different depending on the tranches they purchase. In general, shareholders buy CDO assets with certain rating that offer an increased return than more traditional investments and take advantage of the theoretical variation buying a CDO portfolio. Risk adverse traders such as mutual funds and pension funds will buy the senior tranches in order to get yourself a higher returning than obtaining treasury a genuine.
Senior tranches pay a diffusion above LIBOR even if they are really rate AAA. Other shareholders, such as hedge funds, banking institutions or non-public banking organizations can sometimes prefer junior tranches such as panier notes and equity remarks, tranches giving yields normally not available consist of fixed cash flow products. 2) Who sell CDO and why? CDO is a form of securitization. When ever securitizing, financial institutions manage to transfer their financial loans out of their balance bedding, transferring as well the credit rating risk of these loans. The key CDOs companies are expense banks.
Transferring credit risk, banks need less capital to accomplish Basel II capital requirements. Furthermore, banks will use capital ‘excess’ and the money they receive from the loan transfer to lend again money to more attractive loan providers, generating added fees, returning higher earnings and increasing RoAA and RoAE. This constituted the main objective pertaining to Richard Builder for providing CDOs in RBS. The second important cause of banks to issue CDOs are the commissions and the service fees they earn during the CDO life.
As a result, CDOs happen to be in theory an extremely attractive merchandise for originating banks which will explain their development within the last decade reaching a volume of $520 billion 5 years ago. In practice, company banks copy their loans to exceptional purpose vehicle (SPV) that may package these types of loans promote notes with interest and principal payments to the interested investors. 3) What are the key characteristics with the SEQUIL/MINCS deal described in the case? SEQUILS/MINCS is known as a specific structure that combines both ordinary vanilla and synthetic CDO structures and uses two separated SPVs.
In the case, RBS sells a portfolio of loans for the SPV SEQUILS. SEQUILS can issue remarks from this portfolio and sell those to investors. SEQUILS will also get a credit default change from Morgan Guarantee, paying out a regular fee and shifting in theory the credit risk to JP Morgan. Since JP Morgan will hold raise the risk, SEQUILS should be able to issue several notes with AAA prices even if the actual loans were rated BB- to B+. Then, JP Morgan will back the loans using its own credit default change while at the same time copying the COMPACT DISKS to traders through a individual SPV (MINCS).
By doing this this separates the funding and the credit risk on the bank loan portfolio into two individual pools of investors. 4) From a pool of loans « below expenditure grade (BBB) », the offer promise the creation of investment class securities (some AAA as well as the worst is known as a BBB). Fantastic! How is possible? The key objective with this structure is always to transform low rating loans into bigger rating remarks in order to catch the attention of more shareholders. It also reduces or decreases the fairness tranche, therefore , transferring the risk from the financial institution to a other.
The composition starts with the originating traditional bank (RBS) running a portfolio of loans worth $852. your five million of low-rated loans from BB- to B+. Because RBS wants to increase its capital requirement percentages it will take them off from its balance sheet. The bank produces the 1st SPV, SEQUILS that is consisted of a traditional CDO structure. SEQUILS would concern low rated BB- to B+ records to sell to investors. To attain an investment-grade rating, SEQUILS insures the notes with a credit arrears swap furnished by Morgan Assurance Trust.
SEQUILS would pay Morgan Assure a percentage with the $852. 5 million as being a periodic payment using the pass on. Being copied by a highly regarded entity increases the ratings with the tranches granted by SEQUILS to AAA, AA and BBB financial loans. This repackaging of financial loans attracts even more investors and minimizes raise the risk on RBS. The second stage is to build a separate SPV, MINCS that uses a man made CDO framework. Morgan Assurance Trust acquires credit swaps from MINCS –the second SPV. MINCS would concern notes worth $144 mil based on the first 852. your five million-loan amounts.
MINCS would provide Morgan Assure Trust insurance through a credit rating default change 6 instances its capital of $144 million (6 x 144m = 864). Therefore , traders in MINCS would be receiving higher yields, 6 moments the credit rating swap, within the $144 million, yet they can be exposed to the full risk. To boost the rankings MINCS might invest the proceeds in the $144 mil into a AAA security. 5) Imagine to become portfolio director of a large pension plan fund, do you buy Mincs securities (the BBB ones)? What are the risks from the perspective of the entrepreneur?
What are the potential risks from the point of view of RBS? A stock portfolio manager of the pension account should invest in financial instruments with low risk seeing that a pension fund is known as a scheme which supplies retirement cash flow. Buying MINCS notes means receiving larger yield although also being exposed to the full risk. In reality Morgan Guarantee Trust did not fully insure SEQUILS in case of the default of investors. It only insured 16% to 17% with this SPV (144/852. 5). If it has totally insured SEQUILS, then all the tranches created by SEQUILS could have a triple-A ranking.
MINCS just issued remarks that are really worth $144 mil, which is almost 16% for the original financial loan portfolio. Nevertheless , regardless of whether SEQUILS was partly or totally insured simply by Morgan Guarantee Trust, this kind of structure retains transferring the danger from one part of another. Coming from RBS’s point of view, it is a quite a bit because the financial institution is not exposed to the risk anymore, the equity tranche was reduced or even removed and the financial institution obtained an improved rating due to the portfolio of loans.
In practice, pension account managers dependable the evaluations that MINCS notes received by the score agencies and were not totally aware the chance they were holding by buying those notes. These kinds of complex framework helped to transfer the credit risk from business to another. In addition , it was another important risk factor that was not almost considered by shareholders. Loans a new high arrears correlation with themselves. When one mortgage loan defaulted, a large number of would, which would bring about many credit defaults simultaneously.