Come inside the BLINGFENCE

Posted by Jim Leaviss on 17 December 2008 10:19:00 GMT
bondvigilantes.co.uk/blog/

Shock of the morning wasn't the overnight Fed rate cut to zero-ish, nor the acceleration of their Quantitative Easing programme, both of which we'd expected for some time. The shock came with this press release from Deutsche Bank explaining that they wouldn't be calling a Lower Tier 2 (LT2) bank bond.

Many had felt that there would be a credibility issue in not calling debt at this part of the capital structure, and that it might impair a bank's ability to issue cheaply again in the future as well as being seen as a sign of weakness. Now one of the world's biggest banks has taken such a stance however it is likely that every other bank in the world feels able to assess the callability of their outstanding bonds on purely economic grounds. All LT2 bonds should therefore be assessed on a yield to maturity (YTM) basis rather than on yield to call (YTC) - in other words the spreads being offered on bank bonds were unrealistically high if quoted to those shorter call dates.

So LT2 bonds are lower this morning, but a bigger hit is likely in the even more subordinated Tier 1 (T1) market. If banks now feel no moral pressure to call the more senior Lt2 bonds, they will certainly have no compunction about letting T1 bonds extend maturity - to perpetuity if necessary. And coupled with the fact that many T1 bonds will not be able to pay coupons if the bank isn't paying an equity dividend, many investors are going to be left holding zero coupon perpetual bonds. Bond Maths 101 - the zero coupon perpetual bond is the very worst kind of bond you can own.