- UID
- 701781
- 在线时间
- 小时
- 注册时间
- 2011-12-14
- 最后登录
- 1970-1-1
- 主题
- 帖子
- 性别
- 保密
|
从本周起，团团就要接替小白为大家发经管类的作业了。第一次发作业，有点紧张的说。如果大家觉得有什么需要改进的地方，尽管PM我哈。团团已经尽力避免一篇速度中混有两篇文章的情况了，不过实在是因为字数分配不过来，还是没能完全避免掉这种情况，下次找文章时一定努力改善哈~
【速度】
Europe’s banks
The fear factor
Preventing a big European bank run
Jun 2nd 2012 | from the print edition
【计时1】
IN CONTINENTAL capitals and bank boardrooms there is a common fear. It is that the slow jog of deposits leaving banks in Greece and, more recently, Spain, may turn into a full-blown run that quickly spreads from bank to bank, and then from country to country. There have already been some warning signs, such as a sudden acceleration of deposit outflows from Greek banks in May.
A fierce debate is now taking place as to the best way to avert a run that, if it started, might be difficult to contain and could lead to massive capital flight from the euro zone’s peripheral countries, which have ?.8 trillion ($2.2 trillion) in household deposits (see chart). Increasing numbers of people think the answer is greater financial integration. On May 30th the European Commission said there ought to be “full economic and monetary union, including a banking union; integrated financial supervision and a single deposit guarantee scheme”.
The first step is to shore up confidence in the region’s banks by making sure they have enough capital to withstand a crisis. It is far cheaper to recapitalise banks, after all, than to stand behind all of their deposits. Yet such efforts have been bungled time and again. Europe has twice over the past two years tried to reassure depositors and investors that its banks are sound by subjecting them to “stress tests” that were supposed to mimic an economic downturn. In each case the tests were soon followed by revelations of deep capital holes in some banks (newly nationalised Bankia among them). Since some national regulators have lost the confidence of markets, they are having to bring in outsiders to assess how much capital their banks need.
【284 words】
【计时2】
Actually raising the capital is the next big problem for countries such as Spain or Italy, which are already struggling to convince markets that their public debt is sustainable. Ideally it should come from the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), Europe’s new bail-out fund, as a direct capital injection into banks rather than as loans to governments, which then use the money to recapitalise their ailing lenders.
Injecting capital is politically difficult. Core countries such as Germany fret they will lose a lever of influence over government policies in peripheral countries by handing over equity. They also stand a greater chance of losing money if the ESM takes on the risk of bank investing, not least because they know even less about the balance-sheets of individual lenders than those of national governments. Peripheral countries are less than keen on handing ownership of important banks to bureaucrats in Brussels. And unless the capital is accompanied by supervisory reforms, local regulators may encourage banks to lend more freely at home since the risk of loss will have been exported.
Recapitalising banks would not put the catch on every trigger for a run, however. The worry among depositors is not just that their bank will go bust, it is also that their deposits in euros may overnight turn into a less valuable currency. So savers in the periphery would need some additional reassurance that their money is safe.
The job of providing this extra comfort usually falls to national deposit-insurance funds, ideally ones that are prefunded with assets worth about 1.5% of insured deposits, as is the case in America and Europe. If a medium-sized bank goes bust, prefunded schemes can usually pay depositors immediately; European countries insure qualifying deposits up to ?00,000. For big banks, or for systemic crises, funds are usually backed by their governments.
【303 words】
【计时3】
Such schemes are fine in normal times, but do not do much to reassure people that their deposits won’t be repaid in a different currency (or that their money will be safe if their own government cannot stand behind the scheme). That has prompted calls for a European insurance fund which would guarantee repayment in euros. The idea is appealing, but the politics and logistics of a credible guarantee are daunting.
Household and corporate deposits across the euro area total some ?.6 trillion. Assuming you wanted to limit the insurance to household deposits only, the figure is still ?.9 trillion. Not all of this would be covered by a guarantee. A European Commission study in 2010 reckoned that 72% of deposits (and 95% of deposit accounts) fall under the ?00,000 limit. What’s more, a European fund would not have to be big enough to deal with simultaneous deposit runs across all of Europe but only with ones in the periphery, since money would presumably flow to banks in core countries such as Germany. So the fund would have to be big enough to cover only some ?.3 trillion in insured deposits in the periphery.
The question then is how much of that amount a prefunded scheme would have to set aside. Economists at Citigroup reckon that a fund ought to start with a baseline of 2% of insured deposits, and then top up that amount with an additional premium to reflect the risk that peripheral countries may leave the euro and that their currencies would then depreciate. Assuming a less-than-10% chance of all the peripheral countries leaving, and that when they did their currencies would fall by 30%, a prefunded scheme would need ?54 billion-198 billion. Such a fund should ordinarily be financed by a small insurance premium on deposits, but since the money is needed to restore confidence now, it would have to be backed by the ESM.
【319 words】
【计时4】
Again, none of this is easy to achieve. Banks and voters in core countries (let alone Britain, whose position in a more integrated European banking system is very muddy) would be reluctant to insure peripheral deposits. Without beefed-up European supervision, it could lead to banks taking too many risks. Critics say that even a prefunded scheme would soon be depleted were a run to take hold. But a flawed scheme would be better than nothing.
Spain Denies Seeking Bank Bailout
LONDON - Spain's economy minister has been forced to deny reports his government is seeking international help to prop up its banks, as fears grow that many lenders are facing huge losses on loans. Several banks in Europe's strongest economy, Germany, have also been drawn into the crisis.
Spain’s southern shoreline, the Costa del Sol, has long been a favorite on Europe's tourism map. But alongside the beach bars and nightclubs are row after row of half-built, abandoned apartment blocks.
This is the center of a building boom that burst spectacularly with the global financial crisis. Across Spain, banks gave billions of dollars to property developers trying to cash in. They are left with huge debts.
The government is already nationalizing the ailing lender, Bankia, at an estimated cost of more than $25 billion.
Tobias Blattner is chief of economic research at Daiwa Capital Markets:
“Bankia is really just the tip of the iceberg, after all, because we know that they still have huge, massively bad loans on their balance sheets," said Blattner. "So I think they are in a very critical stage. I think what we have seen is the approach that the Spanish government has taken so far was, in a way, not enough to convince the investors that Spanish banks are safe.”
【296 words】
【计时5】
Spain’s economy minister, Luis de Guindos, denied reports his country is seeking international support for its banks.
He stressed to reporters there was not a single question about an eventual rescue.
Spain wants to avoid following the path of countries like Greece and Portugal in tapping the European Union bailout mechanism, says Fidel Peter Helmer, a trader with Hauck and Aufhaeuser Private Bank.
Helmer says it would mean that Spain's sovereign rating would be further downgraded. He says they want to avoid that because above all, the dilapidated banks are to blame for the misery.
The European Central Bank injected $660 billion worth of liquidity into the continent’s banking system in February. That medicine appears to be wearing off. Wednesday, six German banks had their credit rating downgraded by Moody’s because of fears of their exposure to bad debt.
Meanwhile, the European Commission is unveiling plans to avoid taxpayer-funded bailouts in the future.
Michel Barnier is commissioner for internal markets:
Barnier says in the banking sector, the commission wants more surveillance, more prevention and more caution. He says it does not want taxpayers to pay any longer.
Those proposals would not come into law until 2014 at the earliest, and analysts say they do little to put out the fires raging in Europe’s banking system.
【215 words】
【越障】
Venture capital in emerging markets
VC clone home
Making money by bringing old ideas to new markets
Jun 2nd 2012 | SÃO PAULO | from the print edition
SOME venture capitalists call it “geo-arbitrage”; others know it as “tropicalisation”. The term refers to the practice of backing start-ups that take an established business model and adapt it to an emerging market. Whatever you call it, it is becoming a bigger part of the venture-capital industry as competition at home forces Silicon Valley investors to look farther afield.
Julio Vasconcellos, one of the founders of Peixe Urbano, a Brazilian site offering users discounted deals, is thrilled by the “huge flood” of American investors he has noticed coming to Brazil, for instance. No wonder. Some of them, including Benchmark Capital and General Atlantic, have invested in his own company alongside Brazilian venture capitalists. The financiers have reason to be upbeat, too. Peixe Urbano is a clone of Groupon, an American start-up that went public last year; its business model is one they know can take off.
The idea of tropicalisation has been around for a while. It has already been lucrative for venture capitalists in India and China. Take Baidu, a Chinese interpretation of Google, which made early venture investors a killing; or Alibaba.com, a Chinese version of eBay, an online-auction site. Now venture capitalists are looking at other markets, including Brazil, Indonesia, Russia, South Africa and Turkey. Last year $3.4 billion of venture-capital deals were done in emerging markets, more than double the amount in 2008.
This push into emerging markets has gained momentum because venture capital is experiencing problems in its traditional markets. Silicon Valley was once so inward-looking that venture capitalists used to say they would not back a start-up unless they could cycle to its office. But valuations in North America have risen for both early-stage and later-stage investments (see chart), making it much harder to make great returns.
That is partly because there are too many firms; 369 of them are currently in the market trying to raise $50 billion, according to Preqin, a research firm. There is a lot less competition in emerging markets. The pressure from investors is also rising. A damning new report by the Kauffman Foundation, an outfit which promotes entrepreneurship, analysed its venture-capital portfolio and concluded that 62 out of 100 funds failed to exceed the returns offered by the public market.
Most venture-capital firms do not head abroad with the sole aim of looking for copycats, but plenty of their investments end up that way. Douglas Leone of Sequoia Capital, a big venture-capital firm, reckons that in emerging markets like China around 50% of start-ups backed by foreign venture capitalists in the internet and mobile sectors are copycats, and in markets like Brazil it is closer to 70%.
That is not so surprising. Backing tested concepts mitigates the risk inherent in start-ups and means companies are likely to grow quickly, because the original firm has already worked out the kinks. Often the originator of the business does not have the expertise to enter new countries quickly, so copycats can get there first.
They can also gain an edge by tailoring businesses to local habits. Flipkart, an online-commerce site in India founded by two former Amazon employees, has received funding from Tiger Global, a New York-based hedge fund that specialises in this kind of investing, and Accel Partners, a venture-capital firm. Flipkart has taken off in part because credit cards are less common in India and it offers the option of payment on delivery.
Another example is Trendyol, a Turkish “flash sale” site that mimics Vente-privee.com and Gilt Groupe, which popularised the idea of time-limited online sales of designer clothing. But Trendyol, whose backers include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, also sells its own mass-market clothing line, with seasonal designs “crowdsourced” from users in Turkey.
There are different ways to play the copycat game. Rocket Internet, started by the Samwer brothers—Alexander, Marc and Oliver—in Germany, is a cloning “factory” that copies American and European businesses, hiring entrepreneurs to run them and exporting these start-ups to emerging markets as fast as possible so they are the first entrants. More traditional venture capitalists are setting up offices and selectively backing local entrepreneurs. American venture investors often prefer to bring in a local partner to provide more consistent mentorship to these entrepreneurs and give advice on how to navigate the domestic market.
Such advice can be valuable, given the specific risks of setting up in emerging markets. First, companies can take longer to get off their feet, given grinding local bureaucracy. “An eight-year fund might not be sufficient in Brazil,” says José Luiz Osorio of Jardim Botânico, a Brazilian seed investor. Second, there are cultural barriers: it can be hard to recruit employees to work for an unknown company in exchange for equity, for instance. Third, exiting through large initial public offerings is unlikely in countries like Turkey and Brazil, where IPO activity is muted and investors like to buy well-known firms; that means venture firms are reliant on strategic buyers to gobble up their creations.
Tropicalisation piles on an additional set of risks. Copycats can easily lose share when the original company eventually enters the local market. Sonico, once the Facebook of Latin America, got “pummelled” when Facebook arrived, says Nenad Marovac of DN Capital, which was behind Sonico. And even if they can see off competition, the copycats are unlikely to be mega-blockbusters because, by definition, they are not new. “With innovation you have a global upside, but with copycat innovation you have geographical limits,” says Eric Archer of Monashees Capital, a Brazilian venture firm.
It will not be long before emerging markets spawn their own innovations that can be trotted out on a global scale. That would be closer to the spirit of venture capital, which is supposed to ferret out and fund new ideas, not imitations. Until then, however, tropicalisation is set to become an ever more popular strategy.
【1,000 words】
|
|
京公网安备11010202008513号 京ICP证101109号 京ICP备12012021号
发表于 2012-6-7 20:51:03
收藏
收藏
楼主
