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THE CONTEXT OF FINANCIAL MARKET TURMOILThe NR episode needs to be set in the context of the global financial market turbulence experienced during the summer of 2007. Recent years have experienced an unprecedented wave of complex financial innovation with the creation of new financial instruments and vehicles. In the words of the BOE, this financial innovation had the effect of “creating often opaque and complex financial instruments with high embedded leverage” (BOE, 2007a). Two major instruments at the centre of the financial market turmoil were Securitisation and Collateralised Debt Obligations (CDOs – instruments created from a portfolio of asset-backed securities and then broken into tranches of varying default risk with resulting varied prices): in both cases issue volumes rose sharply in the years prior to the crisis. Figure 1 shows the sharp rise in European securitisations, and figure 2 indicates the volume of global CDO issues and particularly the sharp increase in 2006 and the first half of 2007, followed by an almost total collapse in the summer months of that year.Securitisation involves a bank bringing together a large number of its loans (e.g. mortgages) into a single package and selling the portfolio into the capital market. The portfolio might be bought by other financial institutions or by specially created Special Purpose Vehicles, Structured Investment Vehicles (SIVs), or Conduits established by the securitising bank itself. The buyer issues securities (e.g. FRNs, asset-backed commercial paper, longer-term paper) which are rated by a rating agency according to the quality of the underlying assets in the portfolio. In effect, the bank passes the loans to others, and the strategy is often referred to as originate-and-distribute even though the purchaser might be a specially-created bankruptcy-remote subsidiary of the bank itself. The bank may offer a line of credit to the purchaser to be activated in the event that the buyer encounters difficulty in renewing its short-term securities.The global market financial turmoil during the summer of 2007 was triggered by developments in the rapidly growing sub-prime mortgage (SPM) market in the US. A high proportion of such mortgage loans were securitised and also combined into instruments such as CDOs. These in turn were rated by rating agencies although, in hindsight, in a misleading way in that a CDO would be given a high rating based on only the small proportion of loans within it that was low risk.The mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and CDOs were purchased by banks around the world, hedge funds, and conduits established by banks either for themselves or clients. Such purchases were funded in the main by the issue of short term securities (e.g. asset-backed commercial paper) and in some cases received lines of credit from banks including banks initiating securitisation programmes.Problems emerged at various times during 2007 as a result of a combination of factors: a decline in house prices in the US, the impact of the earlier rise in US interest rates, large-scale defaults on SPMs (during 2007 repossession in the US reached a thirty-seven year high), and a sharp decline in the prices of mortgage-backed securities.Above all, both the primary and secondary markets in SPM securities effectively closed and concern developed over the exposure of some banks in the market. There was uncertainty, for instance, about which banks were holding MBSs and CDOs. In particular, some banks who were dependent on securitisation programmes encountered serious funding problems because of all these uncertainties. Issuing banks and their conduits faced both a liquidity constraint and a rise in the cost of funding as it became increasingly difficult to roll-over short-term debt issues. Liquidity in the inter-bank markets also weakened and a tiering of interest rates emerged during the summer.Banks encountered funding difficulties because of their uncertain exposure to the weakening MBS market, or because of their commitment to provide lines of credit to MBS holders. There was also concern that some banks would be required to hold on their balance sheets mortgage assets they had originally intended to securitise and sell. Overall, there was a sharp movement away from the MBS market.All of this created considerable market uncertainty in the summer months of 2007 which lead to a sharp fall in many asset classes, considerable uncertainty as to the risk exposure of banks, credit markets dried up and most especially those focussed on asset backed securities, and liquidity dried up in the markets for MBSs and CDOs. Overall, there was considerable uncertainty regarding the true value of credit instruments (partly because the market had virtually ceased to function effectively) and the risk exposure of banks. As a result, a loss of confidence developed in the value of all asset-backed securities on a global basis. This was the general context of some banks (and notably NR) facing funding problems.The liquidity problem became serious because securitisation vehicles such as conduits and SIVs were funding the acquisition of long-term mortgages (and other loans) by issuing short-term debt instruments such as asset-backed commercial paper. As liquidity dried up, banks could not finance their off-balance-sheet vehicles and were forced to take assets back on to the balance sheet or hold on to assets they were planning to securitise. This effectively amounts to a process of re-intermediation.Although NR was not exposed to the US SPM market, it became caught up in all this because of its business model: securitisation as a central strategy, and reliance on short- term money market funding. It faced several related problems: it could not securitise and sell new mortgage assets and hence needed to keep assets on the balance sheet that it had intended to sell, and it faced a sharp rise in interest rates in the money market with the result that borrowing costs (even in the event that it could borrow at all) rose above the yield on its mortgage assets.The most serious dimension from a systemic point of view was the run on deposits at NR. Clearly, statements to the effect that the bank was solvent did not convince depositors. In any case, a bank run can be rational if all depositors believe the bank is solvent but also believe that all other depositors believe it is not.
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