Hi Max, good to hear from you. Sorry I am a bit absent here, but I am celebrating life in Sydney...
Now, to your questions: Basel III is a clear positive for hybrids as they will lose their core capital status, which should strenghen incentives for early calls. Now, the exact impacts vary from one hybrid to one another, but we have seen a big Basel III lift before the renewed euro-crisis. Once that is off the table, the rally should continue on its old track. [Especially german silent participations in publicly traded companies [AG] and hybrids with a step up will benefit. ML wrote an update after some rules were further clarified this month.
Finpolconsult is a german think tank that in my view has quite a decent knowledge of hybrids within german banking and how it was treated in the german banking rescue. Of course this information is public, but only people in the markets tend to invest the time and effort to aquire this information. It seems like the big burden carried by the german state to all of our benefit but not to the taxpayers' is becoming a bit more politizied once again. [The greens seem to push this topic and started to question the governments' decisions on this.] Due to the highly complicated matter I expect nothing more than a small debate coming out of this.
Greetings from down under
Dante