Dejan Krušec
- 17 November 2021
- FINANCIAL STABILITY REVIEW - BOXFinancial Stability Review Issue 2, 2021Details
- Abstract
- Investment banking revenues have contributed markedly to the recent increase in euro area banks’ non-interest income growth and the rebound in bank profitability. Internationally, equity capital market (ECM) revenue has doubled in the last three years, while debt capital market (DCM) and merger and acquisition (M&A) revenue has increased by around 50%, with only syndicated lending remaining more subdued. In the euro area, however, the most significant volume increase has come from debt instruments, which have long been the preferred source of corporate funding in the euro area ahead of equity. Despite the international growth in capital market volumes, market commentary before the pandemic suggested that investment banking was the “problem child” of European banking, with many large banks retreating from various market segments as they faced the fallout from the global financial crisis. Against this background, this box considers the recent developments in investment banking of euro area banks in relation to some of the prior trends and considers how sustainable the recent strength might be.
- JEL Code
- G12 : Financial Economics→General Financial Markets→Asset Pricing, Trading Volume, Bond Interest Rates
G21 : Financial Economics→Financial Institutions and Services→Banks, Depository Institutions, Micro Finance Institutions, Mortgages
G24 : Financial Economics→Financial Institutions and Services→Investment Banking, Venture Capital, Brokerage, Ratings and Ratings Agencies
- 29 May 2019
- FINANCIAL STABILITY REVIEW - ARTICLEFinancial Stability Review Issue 1, 2019Details
- Abstract
- This special feature discusses the channels through which climate change can affect financial stability and illustrates the exposure of euro area financial institutions to risks from climate change with the help of granular data. Notwithstanding currently limited data availability, the analysis shows that climate change-related risks have the potential to become systemic for the euro area, in particular if markets are not pricing the risks correctly. A deeper understanding of the relevance of climate change-related risks for the euro area financial system at large is therefore needed. Better data availability and comparability and the development of a forward-looking framework for risk assessments are important aspects of this work going forward.
- JEL Code
- G01 : Financial Economics→General→Financial Crises
G18 : Financial Economics→General Financial Markets→Government Policy and Regulation
G20 : Financial Economics→Financial Institutions and Services→General
Q54 : Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics, Environmental and Ecological Economics→Environmental Economics→Climate, Natural Disasters, Global Warming
- 29 November 2017
- FINANCIAL STABILITY REVIEW - ARTICLEFinancial Stability Review Issue 2, 2017Details
- Abstract
- When banks judge that more value can be extracted by offering non-performing loans (NPLs) for sale rather than working them out themselves, potential investors cannot be sure that the credit quality of the assets is as good as the banks portray it to be. Such information asymmetries in the NPL market drive a wedge between the prices that investors are prepared to pay for NPLs and the prices that banks are prepared to sell them for. While information asymmetries can be overcome through investor due diligence, this requires specialist expertise and the costs of valuing NPL portfolios can be very high. As few investors have the resources to absorb such costs, barriers to entering the market are compounded. This appears to explain why the euro area NPL markets display the features of an oligopsony, a situation where there is a concentration of market power among a limited number of investors, which pushes traded prices even lower. At the same time, potential NPL investors can face coordination challenges when debtors have multiple loans with different banks. In such situations, investors must face the prospect of competing with other creditors for the debtor’s resources. While coordination between banks for common exposures may alleviate this problem, this too can be costly, weighing further on market prices. By offering the prospect of greater transparency in NPL markets, fostering wider investor participation and addressing coordination issues, NPL transaction platforms could help in overcoming all three of these market failures. The attendant improvement in market liquidity would allow banks to achieve better prices for NPL sales, preserve their capital and mitigate financial stability risks. This special feature outlines the desirable features of NPL transaction platforms and discusses their operational implementation.
- JEL Code
- G00 : Financial Economics→General→General