Rottweiler
Forumer storico
Austria plans to put senior
creditors of failing banks in the firing line for losses sooner
than the European Union requires, as it awaits the results of
the European Central Bank’s health check of euro-area lenders.
The Finance Ministry in Vienna sent a bill to parliament
that would immediately enact the bail-in rules laid out in the
EU’s Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive, rather than waiting
until Jan. 1, 2016, as allowed by BRRD. All EU member states
must transpose the directive into national law by year-end.
“The law will have the positive effect of preventing grave
economic damage that the uncontrolled and unprepared resolution
of banks can have,” the ministry said in the documents sent to
lawmakers. “There will be a much lower use of public funds to
stabilize failing banks than in the wake of the recent financial
crisis.”
Austria’s government has injected about 8.1 billion euros
($10.4 billion) into three banks that were on the brink of
collapse in the last six years. Popular anger about the bailouts
has caused voters to abandon the governing coalition and flock
to protest parties, prompting a controversial bail-in of state-
guaranteed bonds earlier this year.
Under BRRD authorities will, as a general rule, require 8
percent of a struggling bank’s liabilities to be wiped out
before recourse can be made to industry funds or taxpayer
support. Ordinary shareholders face losses first. If that’s not
enough, holders of other instruments that count as capital, such
as preferred shares and junior bonds, and then senior unsecured
creditors would be targeted.
Stress Test
Yet the law allows nations some scope to provide so-called
precautionary aid to banks without triggering a risk of senior
bondholder losses. Such aid could be applied in cases where a
bank is found in a stress test to need more capital.
The Austrian bill also contains powers spelled out in BRRD
for regulators to convert cooperatives and savings banks into
regular joint stock corporations if they’re at risk. This would
simplify bringing in new owners and swapping debt into equity,
the bill states.
Oesterreichische Volksbanken AG, which already received
1.35 billion euros of aid, together with the 50 cooperative
banks that own it, will “likely” fail the health check the ECB
is conducting before it begins to supervise euro-area banks on
Nov. 4, Fitch Ratings said this month.
Austrian Finance Minister Hans Joerg Schelling said last
week the country can’t support the lender again, of which it
already owns 43 percent, because it has already received aid.
The draft law proposes rules that allow the FMA regulator
to wipe out junior debtholders in case a bank needs emergency
state aid, according to the text.
Dealing with Volksbanken is complicated by the fact that
the cooperative is ultimately owned by some 700,000 of its
clients and that about 13 billion euros of retail deposits are
held at the banks. When it was bailed out in 2012, Chancellor
Werner Faymann’s Social Democrats suggested that retail owners
also share some of the losses. That plan wasn’t pursued at the
time.
il SENIOR di HAA 2017 si e' bruciato 8 pts venerdi... meditare...
Come suggerito da SVA, la notizia austriaca merita più di una riflessione.
A mio avviso non ci si dovrebbe soffermare tanto sullo spauracchio del bail-in applicato ai senior (anche se non può essere escluso, in casi estremi...) quanto sulla parte grassettata, e cioè:
1)entro fine anno (stiamo parlando di 3 mesi, non di 3 anni...) la BRRD dovrebbe essere recepita da tutti i Paesi dell'Unione Europea;
2)altri Paesi, oltre all'Austria, potrebbero utilizzare la facoltà, prevista dalla legge, di renderne immediatamente effettiva l'applicazione.
Se questi eventi si verificheranno, si porrà fine alla cantilena sulla non-applcabilità del bail-in in questa o quella forma...