Die Gefahr der verdeckten Schulden für das Finanzsystem
Ich beschäftige mich in dieser Woche mit den Risiken, die steigende Zinsen für das Finanzsystem mit sich bringen. Eine Sorge, die auch von führenden Akteuren geteilt wird, wie die FINANCIAL TIMES (FT) berichtet:
- „Vincent Mortier, chief investment officer at Amundi, which has €1.9tn in assets, said in an interview that the recent turmoil unleashed by the UK government’s ‚mini‘ Budget was ‚a reminder that shadow banking is a reality.‘“ – bto: Was daran liegt, dass dort mit hohem Leverage – also Schulden – gearbeitet wird und deshalb die Anfälligkeit für Schocks und steigende Zinsen erheblich ist.
- Und auch die Pensionsfonds haben da mitgespielt: „The strategies, known as liability-driven investing, have leverage embedded within them because they use a variety of derivatives that allow pension schemes to increase their exposure to gilts, without necessarily holding the bonds outright. The drop in gilt prices led to a rush of margin calls as counterparties demanded more cash as collateral to keep the hedging arrangement in place. Funds were forced to sell assets, including gilts, to meet the calls, depressing prices further in a vicious circle that eventually led to an intervention from the Bank of England.“ – bto: Ohne die Intervention wäre es zum Crash gekommen. Es zeigt aber die Fragilität des Systems.
- „(…) experts estimate that LDI leverage turned £500bn of underlying assets into £1.5tn of invested money.“ – bto: Wow.
- „Increased capital requirements imposed on banks (…) have moved risk off their balance sheets to less heavily regulated parts of the financial system, namely asset managers, insurance companies and pension funds. Investors have fuelled the shift by pouring money into alternative strategies such as private credit as they searched for yield in a low interest rate environment. In 2000, non-banks held $51tn of financial assets, compared with banks’ $58tn, according to the Financial Stability Board. Its latest data showed non-banks hold $227tn in financial assets at the end of 2020, outstripping banks at $180tn.“ – bto: Alles eine Folge der Politik des billigen Geldes, was natürlich bei einem Trendbruch nicht mehr funktioniert!
- „Mortier singled out several areas where hidden leverage might be a concern: over-the-counter derivatives, which are negotiated privately, away from exchanges; real estate, and parts of the private credit market including leveraged loans.“ – bto: Alle arbeiten mit mehr Kredit, um so die Rendite zu steigern.
- „The BoE’s Financial Policy Committee recently warned of risks lurking in the US private credit markets. It noted that leveraged lending increased from about $2tn in 2017 to $3tn at the end of last year, and said that companies with such debt ‚were likely to be particularly vulnerable to the tightening in financial conditions and the weaker growth outlook‘.“ – bto: Ein Leveraged Loan ist eine Art von Darlehen, das Unternehmen oder Einzelpersonen gewährt wird, die bereits erhebliche Schulden oder eine schlechte Kredithistorie haben. Es ist also riskanter.
- „Mortier also highlighted collapsed family office Archegos Capital Management as an example of how leverage can build up under the radar. (…) By using derivatives, where the bank it traded with bought or sold stocks on Archegos’s behalf, the firm left no visible footprint of its activity to the investing public. Archegos’s collapse caused billions of dollars of losses for investment banks including Credit Suisse, UBS, Nomura and Morgan Stanley after it defaulted on margin calls, with more than $100bn wiped from the valuations of nearly a dozen companies as Archegos’s positions were unwound.“ – bto: Solche Krisen können sich ausweiten.
