Europe

With Brexit uncertainty having ratcheted up a number of notches since Prime Minister Boris Johnson sought to prorogue parliament, yet again investor attention is focused on what impact a hard Brexit could have on sterling assets, and how to best protect themselves from associated volatility. Since the Brexit referendum in 2016, our view has been that safely capturing the ‘Brexit premium’ priced into many sterling assets was a way to enhance value for investors. However, we have always had a cautious view on what Brexit could ultimately look like, and currently it seems clear that the chance of a hard Brexit has increased significantly.

Yesterday, the Queen approved a request from the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson (‘Bojo’), to suspend Parliament from 10th September to 14th October. This means that when MPs return from summer recess next Tuesday, they could have as few as four days sitting in Parliament before it is suspended again. The Government have argued that this is following procedure – on average a Parliamentary session lasts a year and then is suspended before a Queen’s speech begins a new session – the current parliamentary session has lasted two years. A new session allows the Government to outline its agenda, as well as resetting quotas for certain mechanisms such as Private Members’ Bills.

The European Central Bank faces quite a conundrum ahead of its upcoming monetary policy meeting on September 12. ECB President, Mario Draghi, has clearly signalled that a cut to the refinancing rate (currently at minus 40bp) is likely and markets are now pricing this in with an 85% probability. The problem is, the ECB has also signalled that it will simultaneously consider tiering the bank reserves this rate actually applies to.

Since the two anti-establishment parties (The League and Five-Star) formed a coalition and took control in Italy, markets have been uncertain on the domestic government policy that was promising many things to many people and ultimately creating considerable friction with the European Commission (EC).

The embers of the European ABS H1 primary pipeline are now cooling down for the summer break. After a slow start to the year driven by the delayed implementation of new regulations, we saw an increasingly busy pipeline as Q2 developed and became the third busiest quarter of issuance post crisis. July saw almost €20bn equiv. of supply, taking the year to date total to €58bn including a record €19bn in CLOs. This accords with our somewhat contrarian view that 2019 issuance would eventually keep pace with 2018 (a post crisis record). July’s total went a long way in achieving this, bringing YTD issuance just 6% short of the 2018 run rate. In late June this was 28%.

August has been a very challenging month so far for risk markets, while in traditional risk off, UST treasuries have seen sharp declines in yield back to the lows last seen in October 2016. We can’t help but think that this sharp adjustment will become more ingrained in August, following 6 months of relatively benign markets.

The euro area bank lending survey for the second quarter of 2019, released yesterday, suggests European banks are becoming more cautious and beginning to tighten lending criteria to various parts of the economy.

European bond markets can breathe a sigh of relief this morning as Christine Lagarde is poised to be the new president of the European Central Bank, succeeding Mario Draghi in October.

This week Asset-Backed Securities (ABS) market participants from across the globe gathered for the 23rd annual three-day Global ABS conference in Barcelona. And this year it proved more popular than ever with over 4,000 attendees (a post-crisis record) made up of issuers, arrangers, service providers, traders, analysts, market regulators, the industry press, and of course investors like ourselves. In particular, we felt the number of issuers represented was noticeably higher than we have seen in recent years.

Brexit deliberations are currently at a standstill in the UK parliament, as are negotiations with EU representatives. The next steps in the exit process are clouded in uncertainty, with numerous options on the table. In this environment, it’s no surprise that investors are still demanding a spread premium for sterling denominated credit, over and above comparable euro denominated issues.

Earlier this year Santander became the first bank not to call its Additional Tier 1 (AT1 or ‘CoCo’) bonds at the first call date

The ECB published the result of its Supervisory Review and Evaluation Process (SREP) yesterday, which increased the average capital requirements for European banks, and overall, increased the average SREP requirement by approx. 100bps.