In the last 10 years, the Equator Principles or EPs have emerged as the industry standard for financial institutions to assess social and environmental risk in the project finance market. The EPs – which are based on the International Finance Corporation or IFC’s performance standards on social and environmental sustainability and the World Bank’s environmental, health and safety guidelines – have significantly increased attention on social/community responsibility, including as related to indigenous peoples, labour standards, and consultation with locally affected communities. They have also promoted convergence in the market: at present, 79 financial institutions in 32 countries have officially adopted the EPs, reportedly covering over 70% of international project finance debt in emerging markets.

This month saw the approval of the third version of the EPs, or EP III, completing a consultation process that was launched in July 2011. EP III will be effective from 4 June 2013 and financial institutions that are signatories to the EP, called EPFIs, will need to apply EP III to all new transactions by 1 January 2014.

…continue reading: Equator Principles III Enters Into Force This June

The debate regarding “too big to fail” (“TBTF”) has reemerged as a focus of regulators, legislators and the media. We review the regulatory activity since the Dodd-Frank Act was enacted and show that new proposals intended to address TBTF tend to put the policy cart before the regulatory implementation horse.

By our count, regulators have amassed over 1,650 pages in proposed and final rules that seek to address TBTF, which we roughly define as proposals that seek to limit the size of financial institutions, the scope of their activities or otherwise seek to protect the Federal safety net (which we use as a term to refer to any Federal assistance, including deposit insurance). In addition, there are provisions in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (“DFA”) which address TBTF that do not require rulemaking.

Despite this volume of regulatory work to implement the DFA’s reforms, which is mostly not yet complete, proposals for new measures are being put forward, including:

…continue reading: Too Early to Tell if Dodd-Frank Ends “Too Big To Fail”

UBS recently announced it would pay part of the bonuses of 6,500 highly compensated employees with bonds that would be forfeited if the bank does not meet its capital requirements. Taxpayers should applaud this initiative. Other financial institutions should be rewarded for emulating it.

As the global financial crisis of 2007-2009 reminds us, the impairment of large interconnected intermediaries can have devastating effects on economic activity. This threat can induce governments to bail out distressed financial institutions. The direct costs to taxpayers of these bailouts are apparent. Beyond the direct costs, the prospect of bailouts removes much of the downside risk that the owners and employees of financial institutions should bear, distorting their financing and investment decisions, as well as increasing the likelihood and expected magnitude of future bailouts. The UBS “bonus bonds,” which echo a recommendation we made in The Squam Lake Report (French et al, 2010), mitigate these distortions.

…continue reading: Aligning Incentives at Systemically Important Financial Institutions

A critical policy question is the extent to which “systemic” banks provide value from an economic or social perspective. Much research has been mobilized to demonstrate this, as well as to counter these findings to argue that the biggest banks enjoy undue subsidies because they are so systemic as to be protected by taxpayers. Markets may indeed perceive some big banks as too big to fail (TBTF), but perception does not make reality. Thus, this paper assesses how a systemic financial institution can be differentiated from others to inform the debate over policy responses to TBTF and pending regulatory actions and U.S. legislation to govern the largest financial institutions. Quite simply, if there are no reliable, objective systemic criteria, then policy based on size thresholds or other “systemic” indicators will be at best ineffective antidotes to global financial crises even as they do unnecessary damage to banks and, more broadly, to financial-market efficiency and effectiveness.

In this paper, we assess the ability of regulators to define the criteria that characterize systemically-important financial institutions (SIFIs). The definition of systemic is critical since an array of rules predicated on the negative externalities of SIFIs is under active development. Further, allegations that “systemic” firms, most notably very large bank holding companies (BHCs), are TBTF have aroused calls for additional, generally punitive action for designated institutions.

…continue reading: A Critical Missing Reform Criterion: Regulating “Systemic” Banks

Since the New York State Department of Financial Services (“DFS”) began operations in late 2011, the agency appears to have lived up to its billing as an activist regulator of insurers and financial institutions. DFS has taken on several novel issues and will likely continue to do so. Insurers and financial institutions doing business in New York should keep DFS on their radar given the scope of its regulatory mandate and its initial enforcement activities since inception. Institutions outside New York may also want to monitor DFS’s initiatives, which may pique the interest of federal or state law enforcement and regulatory agencies in other jurisdictions and lead to similar or parallel initiatives.

DFS’s Actions Since Inception

On October 3, 2011, the former New York State Banking and Insurance Departments were combined to create DFS. The 4,400 entities DFS supervises have about $6.2 trillion in assets and include all insurance companies in New York, all depository institutions chartered in New York, the majority of United States-based branches and agencies of foreign banking institutions, mortgage brokers in New York, and other financial service providers.

…continue reading: NY State Department of Financial Services at the One-Year Mark

One of the dumbest corporate governance issues is whether to split the roles of Board Chair and CEO. That debate is now playing out on the front pages of business sections (print and online) as shareholders will decide next week in a nonbinding vote whether to take the chairman of the board title away from JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon.

This is a reprise, for the zillionth time, of the pointless push by governance types to call the senior director “chairman of the board” rather than “lead” or “presiding” director and to deny the CEO the chairman of the board title. (Dimon, of course, is today Chairman of the Board and CEO of JP Morgan; Lee Raymond is JPM’s “lead” director.)

What is lost in virtually all stories and commentary hyping the Dimon election is an answer to the basic question: what is the function of the lead director? It is this issue of function, not form (i.e., what title that senior director carries), which is crucial.

It has been a governance verity, if not always a reality, that a strong board should provide oversight and constructive criticism to the CEO and other company leaders.

Since Enron, this basic principle has been implemented in most companies by designating one director to be first among equals, whatever her title. That director performs at least the following core roles (as I have discussed in detail elsewhere):

…continue reading: For Dimon and Board Leaders: Function Matters, Not Form

Transactions that reduce regulatory capital requirements for banks have recently come under media and regulatory scrutiny. The New York Times characterized them as a “trading sleight of hand.” The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision has proposed limiting the ways in which capital requirements can be reduced by such transactions. This post discusses the new Basel proposals in light of prior guidance published by Basel and the Federal Reserve. As banks seek ways to meet heightened capital requirements and surcharges that are being implemented, they may find greater difficulties in reducing their exposures.

…continue reading: Basel Developments: Credit Risk Mitigation Transactions and Regulatory Capital Arbitrage

Chairman McHenry, Ranking Member Green, and members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify on behalf of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) on Sections 165 and 121 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank Act). Our testimony will focus on the FDIC’s role and progress in implementing Section 165, including the resolution plan requirements and the requirements for stress testing by certain financial institutions.

Section 165 of the Dodd-Frank Act

Resolution Plans

Under the Dodd-Frank Act, bankruptcy is the preferred resolution framework in the event of a systemic financial company’s failure. To make this prospect achievable, Title I of the Dodd-Frank Act requires that all large, systemic financial companies prepare resolution plans, or “living wills”, to demonstrate how the company would be resolved in a rapid and orderly manner under the Bankruptcy Code in the event of the company’s material financial distress or failure. This requirement enables both the firm and the firm’s regulators to understand and address the parts of the business that could create systemic consequences in a bankruptcy.

The FDIC intends to make the living will process under Title I of the Dodd-Frank Act both timely and meaningful. The living will process is a necessary and significant tool in ensuring that large financial institutions can be resolved through the bankruptcy system.

…continue reading: Examining the Application of Title I of the Dodd-Frank Act

Almost half a decade after the onset of the financial crisis, populist sentiment and the resulting political environment continue to fuel stricter regulation of executive and director compensation, with the latest wave in Europe including substantive restrictions on compensation in the financial services industry and “say-on-pay” initiatives (i.e., initiatives providing for shareholder approval of compensation). This post describes these recent European compensation developments, namely:

• The so-called “banker bonus cap” – substantive limits on the amount of variable compensation that can be paid to certain employees at financial institutions; and
• Say-on-pay developments in the E.U. and Switzerland.

…continue reading: European Compensation Developments: Financial Institutions and Beyond

This post summarizes “The Dodd-Frank Act’s Maginot Line:  Clearinghouse Construction,” which will appear in the California Law Review later this year.

Regulatory reaction to the 2008–2009 financial crisis, following the failures of AIG, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and the Reserve Primary Fund, focused on complex financial instruments that deepened the crisis. A consensus emerged that these risky financial instruments should move through safe, strong clearinghouses, which would be bulwarks against systemic risk.

The consensus turned into law, via the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act, in which Congress instructed regulators to construct clearinghouses through which these risky financial instruments would trade and settle. Clearinghouses could repel financial risk, reduce contagion, and halt a local financial problem before it became an economy-wide crisis.

But clearinghouses are weaker bulwarks against financial contagion, financial panic, and systemic risk than is commonly thought. They may well be unable to defend the economy against financial stress such as that of the 2008–2009 crisis. Although they can be efficient financial platforms in ordinary times, they do little to reduce systemic risk in crisis times.

…continue reading: The Dodd-Frank Act’s Maginot Line: Clearinghouse Construction