Da leggere con attenzione: ecco perchè i titoli i AIB sono saliti post acquisto dei depositi di Anglo.
It’s an Irish bank eat Irish bank world
Posted by
Joseph Cotterill on Feb 28 10:00. A Monday morning reminder to Ireland’s
new government of a not so small banking problem, this.
Overnight borrowings from the ECB jumped (again) on Monday — this time to €17.115bn. And this time, the dynamic in Irish banking that has driven this newest spike is fairly clear, if no more sustainable in the long term.
Here’s what’s happened.
Allied Irish Banks ‘won’ an ‘auction’ of ‘deposits’ from bust lender Anglo Irish last week. In reality, and as Ireland’s premier central bank watcher
Lorcan has explained, the point of the ‘auction’ wasn’t just to divest a doomed bank of deposits, but also to aid the funding of Allied Irish Banks.
Allied Irish also ‘won’ €12.2bn of Nama bonds — debt issued to Anglo Irish in return for sending troubled loans to Ireland’s bad bank, which carries a government guarantee and is therefore eligible collateral for open market operations at the ECB.
Swiftly eligible, in the case of what Allied Irish has just done with the €12.2bn —
throw in €3bn of old Irish Nationwide Nama bonds sold to Irish Life & Permanent, and you get Monday’s borrowing figure.
Certainly, Allied Irish’s new purchases have been sent straight to the Marginal Lending Facility — at a penalty interest rate of 1.75 per cent. Nevertheless, that’s only in order to wait for entry into this week’s (1 per cent) Main Refinancing Operation.
Happy Allied Irish.
_____________
Unhappy ECB, Irish taxpayers — and thus, Irish banks, eventually.
For a start, the time is not far off when the ECB will be looking to end fixed rates for its liquidity-giving in favour of variable ones. Partly to draw a veil over its crisis-era monetary stance, partly to isolate what have been politely called ‘persistent bidders’ of liquidity. They count Irish banks among their number rather prominently. In fact, we may get variable rates for some operations
as soon as this week.
As for taxpayers — Irish banks are liquidity-shuffling like this just as significant parts of Ireland’s bailout
come up for negotiation, including bailing-in Irish banks’ senior debt. You can’t go and burn bondholders and then come to the ECB when investors walk out of funding banks in response, may well go the cry from Europe.
And when it comes to other aspects of bailout renegotiation, such as reducing the interest rates charged on Ireland’s rescue loans, other eurozone states might well ask if high rates are actually really quite appropriate for a government so wholly using its sovereign debt for keeping its banks alive.
Talks had begun between Irish opposition parties about forming a coalition at pixel time, meanwhile.
We think we know what might belong first on the agenda.
FT Alphaville It’s an Irish bank eat Irish bank world