KazPost

Kazakhstan News
Tuesday, May 30, 2023

European bank shares are being clobbered by a cocktail of unease

European bank shares are being clobbered by a cocktail of unease

Sky's Ian King explains why more European banks are coming under pressure as the sell-off of recent weeks resumes with no end in sight.
It is another "risk off" day in the jargon for stock markets in Europe.

Banking stocks, in particular, are falling out of bed.

Shares of Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank, Germany's two largest lenders, have fallen at their worst by 13% and 8% respectively while BNP Paribas and Societe Generale, the first and third-largest banks in France, have each fallen by 7% or so.

Meanwhile UBS, which of course has been cajoled by the Swiss government into a shotgun marriage with its largest rival Credit Suisse, has fallen by 7.5%.

These reverses have been echoed to a slightly lesser extent by falls in banking stocks in London. Shares of Barclays, Standard Chartered, NatWest Group, HSBC and Lloyds Banking Group are all among the biggest percentage fallers in the FTSE 100 today.

Perhaps most disquieting is the fact that, not only have some European lenders seen big declines in their share price, the cost of insuring against the likelihood of these banks defaulting has risen.

For example, the price of a five-year credit default swap (or CDS, the instrument used to buy insurance) on Deutsche Bank has shot up from 89.625 basis points two weeks ago to as much as 211.655 basis points.

That is a stupendous increase that speaks to the levels of uncertainty in markets. The price of CDSs on other European lenders have also jumped.

So what's going on?

Several things. The first thing to say is that there does not appear to be a particular single, overwhelming, catalyst for the sell-off. Rather it is a combination of factors.

One of these is the rescue of Credit Suisse which, while impressively executed by the Swiss authorities, has introduced an addition level of uncertainty for those who invest in bonds issued by banks in particular.

The rescue saw some $17bn (£14bn) worth of value in bonds known as 'AT1' bonds completely wiped out.

It has provoked fury among the holders of those bonds because, normally, shareholders rank below bondholders in the hierarchy of creditors - and, on this occasion, shareholders of Credit Suisse received at least a modest sum for their shares even as the AT1 bondholders were wiped out.

That is highly unusual and has probably made some owners of bonds issued by other lenders reappraise their appetite for risk - hence the surge in CDS prices.

Another reason is the fact that there is still a good deal of unease among investors in the mid-tier and regional lenders in the US following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.

Confidence in what was America's 16th largest lender unravelled when it failed to raise extra capital from shareholders and when it was forced to sell a $21bn bond portfolio in order to meet demands from depositors for their money back.

SVB crystallised a $1.8bn loss in the process, due to falls in the value of the bonds in which it had invested, raising concerns in the minds of some bank investors as to how much the worth of bond portfolios owned by other lenders might also have fallen.

Attention has focused on other mid-tier lenders, most notably First Republic, a New York-based bank which, last Friday, received some $30bn in deposits from 11 other lenders - among them giants such as JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup and Wells Fargo - in an attempt to shore up confidence.

So there is concern there - and that has, to an extent, percolated to Europe.

An additional factor is the position of some of the individual banks. Attention focused on Credit Suisse because of its recent accident-prone history and its poor financial performance.

To an extent, Deutsche Bank is coming in for similar treatment for the same reasons.

The lender is no stranger to sudden sell-offs in its share price, most notably in 2016, but in more recent times it has appeared to be back on the straight and narrow. This reflects in no small way Deutsche Bank's restructuring under Christian Sewing, its chief executive, which began in 2019.

Deutsche last month reported a net profit for 2022 of €5.7bn (£5bn), more than twice what it achieved in 2021, which represented its best outcome for 15 years. Yet Deutsche continues to be dogged by past legacy issues - the German financial regulator, BaFin, continues to be unhappy at its internal controls to identify and stop money laundering - and these may yet result in more misconduct penalties.

Legacy misconduct charges also potentially hang over UBS.

It and Credit Suisse are, reportedly, under investigation by the US Department of Justice over allegations that some employees may have helped Russian oligarchs evade sanctions following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

So, no one overriding factor, but lots of individual ones that, put together, create a cocktail of unease.

All of that, ahead of the weekend and as the end of the first quarter approaches, explains why some investors are squaring their books and avoiding excess exposure to banking stocks and bonds.

The reasons why some investors feel uneasy about banks were explained succinctly this week in an article for the Financial Times, entitled "Why I never invest in bank shares", by the influential investor Terry Smith.

In the piece, he highlighted the sector's poor returns to investors, the high levels of leverage in the sector, the disruption to traditional lenders by fintech firms and, above all, the systemic risks that still lurk in the banking sector.

Mr Smith wrote: "Even if the bank you are invested in is well run, it can still be damaged or destroyed by a general panic in the sector... banks can be brought down by the actions of their peers.

"Look at what happened to some US regional banks in the wake of the SVB disaster. Lord Mervyn King, the former Bank of England governor, encapsulated this when he observed that it made no sense to start a run on a bank, but once one has started you should join in."

His words sum up perfectly why, when sell-offs in banking shares occur, the selling can be sometimes indiscriminate.

When a butterfly flaps its wings in Zurich, it can lead to share price falls in New York, London and Frankfurt.
Newsletter

Related Articles

KazPost
Close
0:00
0:00
Two US Employees Fired For Chasing Robbers Out Of Store As They Broke ''Company Policy''
Pfizer, the EU, and disappearing ink - Smoke, Mirrors, and the Billion-Dose Pfizer Vaccine Deal: EU's 'Open Secret
A provocative study suggests: Left-Wing Extremism and its Unsettling Connection to Psychopathy and Narcissism
Ukrainian Intelligence Official Admits to Assassination Attempts on Putin
Bernard Arnault Loses $11.2 Billion in One Day as Investors Fear Slowdown in US Growth Will Reduce Demand for Luxury Products
Russian’s Wagner Group leader: “I am not a chef, I am a butcher. Russia is in danger of a revolution like in 1917.”
TikTok Sues Montana Over Law Banning the App
Ron DeSantis Jumps Into 2024 Presidential Race, Setting Up Showdown With Trump
Talks between US House Republicans and President Biden's Democratic administration on raising the federal government's $31.4tn debt ceiling have paused
Biden Administration Eyeing High-Profile Visits to China: The Biden Administration is heating things up by looking into setting up a series of top-level visits to Beijing by top officials in the coming months
Debt Ceiling Crises Have Unleashed Political Chaos
Weibao Wang, a former software engineer at Apple, was charged with stealing trade secrets related to autonomous systems, including self-driving cars
Mobile phone giant Vodafone to cut 11,000 jobs globally over three years as new boss says its performance not good enough
Elon Musk compares George Soros to Magneto, the supervillain from the Marvel Comics series.
Warren Buffett Sells TSMC Shares Over Concerns About Taiwan's Stability
New Study Finds That Secondary Bacterial Pneumonia Is a Major Cause of Death in COVID-19 Patients Who Require Ventilator Assistance
King Charles III being crowned.
'Godfather Of AI' Geoffrey Hinton Quits Google To Warn Of The Tech's Dangers
A Real woman
Vermont Man Charged with Stalking After Secretly Tracking Woman with Apple AirTag
Elon Musk Statements About Tesla Autopilot Could Be 'Deepfakes,' Lawyers Claim. Judge Evette Pennypacker Does Not Understand How Far and Advanced This Technology Became
Ukraine More Prepared for Counterattack as Reinforcements Arrive
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni Discuss Migration, Defence, and Ukraine
AT&T's Successful Test of Satellite-Based Phone Call Raises Possibility of Widespread Coverage
CNN: "Joe Biden is asking for four more years — when 74% of Americans think the country is heading the wrong way“
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan Cuts Short Live TV Interview Due to Health Issue
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh slams New York Times' pro-government stance and treatment of sources
Enough is enough: it's time to end the war in Ukraine. While Russia may be to blame for starting it, Russia is not the one refusing to stop it
Fox News Settles their case with Dominion Voting Systems for a staggering $787.5 MILLION
21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira has been arrested for leaking classified Pentagon Documents
The Supreme Court will allow a 12-year-old transgender West Virginia girl to compete on her middle school’s girls' sports teams amid a lawsuit over a ban
Bank of America cuts short conference after outrage at Ukraine comments
Mitt Romney calls Trump indictment 'overreach,' says charges were 'stretched' to suit a 'political agenda'
The G-7 aims to make global crypto regulations tougher
Russia arrested an American reporter for the Wall Street Journal on espionage charges
Don’t Dismiss China’s Peacemaking Bid
China and Brazil have signed a new deal that will allow them to trade in their own currencies, bypassing the US dollar as an intermediary
Elon Musk and Others Call for Pause on A.I., Citing ‘Profound Risks to Society’
“We've had evidence prior to the pandemic that masks were largely ineffective at preventing community transmission of influenza “
Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz:
Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz rejects being labeled a "billionaire"
Jamie Dimon is being deposed over JPMorgan Chase role in Epstein lawsuits
Brand new security footage has just been released to the public showing the Active shooter Audrey Elizabeth Hale drove to Covenant Church School in her Honda Fit this morning, parked, and shot her way into the building
AMERICA, 2023
U.S. charges FTX's Bankman-Fried with paying $40 million bribe
Fallen 'Crypto King' Who Owes Millions to Investors Was Kidnapped and Tortured
Regulators blame social media for SVB's rapid collapse: 'Complete game changer'
AOC explains why she opposes banning TikTok
Singapore’s Prime Minister says China and US need to stabilize relations because world can't afford a confict between the two superpowers
Gordon Moore, a co-founder of Intel Corporation, died at 94
×