Banks looking for brave investors to bail them out

Posted Oct 16th 2007 11:21AM by Lita Epstein
Filed under: Market Matters, Citigroup Inc. (C), JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Bank of America (BAC)

Banks are looking for your help. They want you to help bail them out of the mess they created - short-term notes (commercial paper) in funds called structured investment vehicles (SIVs). As expected, Citigroup (NYSE: C), J.P Morgan Chase (NYSE: JPM), and Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) announced their intention to set up a $100 billion dollar "Super SIV" that will buy the current SIVs with the hopes of freeing up some cash so commercial paper can start flowing again. Estimates are that $400 billion is tied up in SIVs and the inability of banks to refinance this short term debt has stalled the credit markets since July.

The U.S. Treasury Department helped to put this fix together, but is not backing it financially. The biggest problem with these SIVs is that they are held off the books and those banks left holding the bag could be in big trouble. Citigroup, whose been leading the charge to set up this "Super SIV," also holds the biggest share of the SIV pie.

Treasury Security Henry Paulson's playing dumb. He told reporters yesterday [subscription required] after an event at the University of Texas at Austin, "The regulators didn't have a clear enough visibility with what was going on in terms of these off-balance-sheet SIVs," according to a report today in the Wall Street Journal. Wow. Wasn't he ever involved in the sale of these things when he was Chairman and Chief Executive at Goldman Sachs? Could he have given the regulators some clues when he got to treasury, if he really believed that? He did signal changes in regulation may be coming to prevent this type of disaster in the future.

Getting back to the investment. In order to sell these risky SIVs, promises are being made to investors that none of the riskiest subprime securities will be included in the fund. In order to sell assets to the fund they must be rated at least AA, but the rules are complex and Jeffrey Gundlach, chief investment officer for the Los Angeles-based asset management firm TCW Group, calls the deal "murky," according to the Journal. He should know he recently started a $1.6 billion distressed-debt fund.

Most of the other Wall Street firms are staying out of the mess, but Citigroup has the most to lose so it wants to find a fix. Bank of America, while it doesn't hold SIVs off the books, does hold SIVs in many of its mutual funds. In order to prevent a major hit to the returns of those mutual funds it needs to help find a fix. J.P. Morgan Chase likes the potential cash boon from the fees it will make selling the investment.

I certainly hope none of the mutual funds I hold are caught up in this mess. I wouldn't consider helping bail out these banks, but you might like the risk if the return is high enough.

Lita Epstein is the author of more than 20 books including "Trading for Dummies" and "Reading Financial Reports for Dummies."

Tags: bac, bank of america, BankOfAmerica, c, citigroup, inthenews, jp morgan chase, jpm, JpMorganChase, SIVs, structured investment vehicles, StructuredInvestmentVehicles

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

10-16-2007 @ 4:10PM

Don Martin said...

There's a very fine line between "brave" and "stupid".

Anyone considering an investment in these vehicles should take a close look at the AA-rated ABX baskets. These SIV's could quickly become sieves for investors hoping to scoop bargains out of the MBS sector.