Fonte Wall Street Journal
Dexia's Long Shadow
By MATTHEW CURTIN
The game's up for
Dexia's shareholders.
But what about its bondholders?
The Belgian bank's board was scheduled to meet on Saturday to decide on an orderly wind-up designed to avoid damaging France's triple-A and Belgium's double-A credit rating.
But given the uncertainty over the potential losses on the remaining assets and the scale of Dexia's refinancing needs, a disorderly default that leaves bondholders facing losses cannot be ruled out.
Trading in Dexia's shares, worth barely a quarter of their value in January, has been suspended until after Saturday's board meeting.
But the broad outcome of the restructuring plan is known. Dexia will sell its best assets.
Two French state-owned banks are lined up for the French local-government financing arm.
Qatar is in exclusive negotiations for Dexia Luxembourg. Several banks are interested in Denizbank in Turkey. Belgium may nationalize Dexia's Belgian retail bank.
Dexia
would then have less than €200 billion
($269 billion) in assets, reduced from
€518 billion at June 30.
Sales proceeds might add around €9 billion to its €8.8 billion in total equity.
France and Belgium, both shareholders in Dexia since its 2008 bailout, hope the recapitalized bank will then have time to sell down assets, including a €125-billion portfolio of government and public-sector debt, most of it investment grade.
For shareholders, the new Dexia's fortunes,
given still significant holdings of
Greek, Italian and Spanish debt,
will remain tied to the resolution of the euro-zone debt crisis.
The shares are likely to trade at a wide discount to book value.
But bondholder fortunes
will depend on Dexia's ability to roll over funding for a large remaining balance sheet consisting of assets with an average duration of more than 10 years.
True, Dexia will benefit from government funding guarantees and has assets eligible for ECB repurchase operations.
But
modest losses on asset sales might wipe out much of Dexia's equity,
forcing the bank's liabilities on France's and Belgium's creaking balance sheets.
Dexia may cast a shadow over Brussels and Paris for a while yet.