credit market

White House – Start Lending Money Now!

White house served notice to banks who received bailout packages to start lending money.

Click here for information about Non-Purpose, Non-Recourse Loans

It was known that banks did not use the bailout money to lend. They were simply sitting on the cash and only buying out distressed banks. Credit market remained closed even though there were some signs that credit was moving. Wall Street responded in negative way as many Americans could not get a loan. Therefore, white house stepped in.

“What we’re trying to do is get banks to do what they are supposed to do, which is support the system that we have in America. And banks exist to lend money,” White House press secretary Dana Perino said.

Anthony Ryan, Treasury’s acting undersecretary for domestic finance, made the same point in a speech in New York before financial executives.

“As these banks and institutions are reinforced and supported with taxpayer funds, they must meet their responsibility to lend, and support the American people and the U.S. economy,” Ryan told the annual meeting of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association. “It is in a strengthened institution’s best financial interest to increase lending once it has received government funding.”

Treasury is buying preferred shares in banks in return for cash infusion, however; about 6,000 banks are not publicly traded and cannot get funding due to restrictions Treasury currently has.

Treasury is currently working on a plan where both banks, publicly traded and private can qualify for the program.

Treasury has pumped up money to help economy get back on its track and avoid national recession. Treasury Department will buy $125 billion of preferred stocks from nine largest banks, which account for 50 percent of all U.S deposits. An additional $125 billion will be passed to banks in upcoming weeks.

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight Committee, asked banks who received $125 billion to address executive pay, employee pay and other bonuses.

“I question the appropriateness of depleting the capital that taxpayers just injected into the bank through the payment of billions of dollars in bonuses, especially after one of the financial industry’s worst years on record,” Waxman said.

Many reports were surfacing when news spread out that banks are only buying other banks and have no intension of lending and opening their credit lines. Indeed, the government approved PNC Financial Services Group Inc. to receive $7.7 billion in return for company stock on Friday and, at the same time; PNC said it was acquiring National City Corp. for $5.58 billion.

However, there is no language in bailout plan that would tell banks to use the money for lending. Many officials argue that attaching requirements, banks will discourage to take advantage of this program.

Other efforts have included:

-A Federal Reserve program, to commercial paper or business debts.

-Temporary guarantees by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. of new issues of bank debt fully protecting the money, for a fee, even if the institution fails.

-Emergency loans from the Fed for financial institutions.

-A temporary increase in the cap on deposit insurance from $100,000 to $250,000 on interest-bearing accounts, and unlimited deposit insurance for non-interest bearing accounts, which small businesses often use to cover payrolls and other expenses and which frequently exceed $250,000.

-The Fed’s half-point reduction in its target interest rate on Oct. 8, done in conjunction with rate cuts by other central banks around the world.

Click here for information about Securities Based Lending / Stock Loans

Asset Based Lending as a Financing Tool –

As companies confront a tight credit market coupled with lower than expected results, many CFOs are viewing asset based lending as a viable option in the financing tool kit. Even successful companies with strong banking relationships can quickly fall out of favor with lenders and lose access to unsecured financing, especially if they’ve shown recent losses.

A few bad quarterly results doesn’t necessarily mean that a company is in bad shape, but stringent bank underwriting parameters can cause existing loans to be called and prevent the firm from qualifying for new financing. A company facing such a scenario can use asset based lending (ABL) arrangements as bridge loans to pay off banks and provide liquidity until bank financing is achievable.

Click here for information about Non-Purpose, Non-Recourse Loans

What is asset based lending?

An asset-based loan is secured by a company’s accounts receivable, inventory, equipment, and/or real estate, whereby the lender takes a first priority security interest in those assets financed. Asset-based loans are an alternative to traditional bank lending because they serve borrowers with risk characteristics typically outside a bank’s comfort level. These assets typically have an easily determined value. The financing can take the form of loans to revolving credit lines to equipment leases and can range from $100,000 to $1 billion, depending on needs and circumstances.

How can ABL be a beneficial financing option?

Acquisition

To grow a business, a company may look to acquire a strategic partner or even a competitor. Asset-based financing is often an efficient means to obtain funding for business acquisitions.

Turnaround Financing

Turnaround financing is often used by under-performing businesses that are not achieving their full potential. In some cases, it is used for businesses that are either insolvent or on their way to becoming insolvent. Asset-based lenders are accustomed to the bankruptcy process and asset-based financing is ideal for turnarounds because of its flexibility.

Capital Expenditures

Capital expenditure is the money spent to acquire and/or upgrade physical assets such as buildings and machinery. Capital expenditure is also commonly referred to as capital spending or capital expense.

Debtor-in-Possession (DIP) Financing

Debtor-in-possession (DIP) refers to a company that has filed for protection under Chapter XI of the Federal Bankruptcy Code and has been permitted by the bankruptcy court to continue its operations to effect a formal reorganization. A DIP company can still obtain loans–but only with bankruptcy court approval. DIP financing, which is new debt obtained by a firm during the Chapter XI bankruptcy process, allows the company to continue to operate during a reorganization process. Asset-based lenders also provide exit financing or confirmation financing to companies coming out of bankruptcy.

Growth

Typically, as a company grows so does its need for financing. Also, as a company’s collateral grows, its assets can strengthen its ability to borrow. An experienced and creative asset-based lender can assemble a credit facility that can scale to grow with a company.

Recapitalization

Recapitalization is the process of fundamentally revising a company’s capital structure. A company might recapitalize due to bankruptcy or replacing debt securities with equity in order to reduce the company’s ongoing interest obligation. A leveraged recapitalization typically achieves just the opposite–by taking on a material amount of debt, the company increases its ongoing interest obligation but is able to pay its shareholders a special dividend.

Refinancing/Restructuring

When a company enters or exits a growth stage, refinancing or restructured financing may be key to creating a capital structure that better meets the needs of the company. This type of financing is often used for market expansion, completing an acquisition, restructuring operations, or following a successful corporate turnaround.

Buyout

A buyout is the purchase of a controlling percentage of a company’s stock. In a leveraged buyout (LBO), the acquiring company uses the minimum amount of equity to purchase the target company. The target company’s assets are used as collateral for debt, and its cash flow is used to retire debt accrued by the buyer to acquire the company. A management buyout (MBO) is an LBO led by the existing management of a company.

What are the advantages to ABL?

Tends to feature fewer covenants than other types of financing and those it does include tend to be more flexible. Cash flow loans, by contrast, often have four or five covenants including total leverage, fixed charge coverage, and minimum net worth.

If a company is growing, the receivables and inventory it uses to secure the asset based loan is likely growing as well. Thus, the company has a greater collateral base and can borrow funds to fuel its growth.

ABL instills discipline. Since the loans are based upon accounts receivable and inventory, the company is motivated to improve collections and complete the production cycle in a timely manner.

As mentioned earlier, ABL imposes less stringent covenants compared to cash flow loans. These type of loans also provide better security to the lenders, which in turn allows them to grant more time to the borrowers to turn their company around in difficult times.

What are the disadvantages of ABL?

Since the level of funding is contingent upon the asset values on the balance sheet, there may not be sufficient liquidity. Only asset rich companies would likely benefit, while many service companies would not.

Such a requirement can be difficult for the company.

ABL tends to be more expensive than other types of financing, often three to five percentage points above traditional bank financing.

ABL runs counter to the thinking of a lot of CFOs who believe it is dangerous to tie short term assets to long term financing.

Although ABL is now a common financing tool, it is not for everyone. It makes sense to explore all types of financing before deciding if asset based lending is the right choice.

The CFO must review the state of the company’s credit, analyze the firm’s asset structure, and its current debt load. Asset based lending can provide the liquidity needed for the company to grow until less expensive bank financing is available.

Click here for information about Securities Based Lending / Stock Loans

Is there a Capital Shortage? I Think Not.

The US government is executing a coup d’état of capitalism and I fear that we will pay the price for many years to come. Hank Paulson, Ben Bernanke and a host of others tell us the credit market is not working and the only way to get it working again is for the government to intervene. They claim this intervention is urgently needed and if we don’t act, the consequences are dire. Dire, as in New Depression dire. Have these supposed experts on capitalism forgotten how it really works?

Click here for information about Non-Purpose, Non-Recourse Loans

Last week Goldman Sachs raised $10 billion in new capital in one day. They sold $5 billion in preferred stock and warrants to Berkshire Hathaway and also completed a secondary offering of common stock that raised another $5 billion. Friday, JP Morgan raised $10 billion in a secondary offering to help pay for the Washington Mutual takeunder. Both of these offerings were oversubscribed, meaning that the companies could have raised more capital if they wanted. There is not a shortage of capital for well run financial companies.

There is however, a shortage of capital for companies that have acted irresponsibly with investor’s capital in the recent past. For some reason, our political leaders believe this is a failure of the market, but isn’t this what should be expected from rational investors? Given a choice, why would a rational investor allocate limited capital to the losers rather than the winners? If capital is really as scarce as it seems, isn’t it better for our economy if we make sure that it is allocated wisely?

The biggest bank failure in the history of the United States happened last Thursday night and by Friday morning, it was business as usual. The only difference was the name on the door and the losses suffered by those unfortunate enough to invest in Washington Mutual bonds or stock. The taxpayers didn’t lose anything and depositors didn’t lose anything, only investors. That is how capitalism works in case everyone has forgotten.

The “crisis” we face today is not a creation of the market. Government intervention over many years (but especially the last year) is what brought us to the point where we’ve placed our hopes for economic recovery on the good intentions of a Congress facing re-election in a few weeks. There has been much commentary recently about the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the creation and expansion of the sub-prime mortgage market which many believe to be the cause of this mess. That criticism is certainly warranted, but little attention has been paid to the real culprit – the Federal Reserve.

Furthermore, what attention there has been is concentrated on the role of Alan Greenspan rather than Ben Bernanke. While Alan Greenspan deserves his share of the blame, Bernanke’s contribution to this mess should not be minimized or excused.

Bernanke obviously does not trust the market to sort the winners from the losers. When this erupted last year, the Fed lowered interest rates, including the discount rate, which is the rate charged by the Fed to lend directly to banks. There has always been a stigma attached to borrowing directly from the Fed and for good reason. If a bank can’t get other banks to lend it money, that tells the market something about the condition of the bank in question.

Last August, Bernanke convinced three large banks to borrow at the discount window in an effort to remove that stigma. When that didn’t work, he concocted a scheme to allow banks to borrow from the Fed in anonymity via a mechanism he called the Term Auction Facility. When Bear Stearns blew up, he added the Term Securities Lending Facility for investment banks. By removing the stigma of borrowing from the Fed and hiding the identity of the borrowers, Bernanke removed important information from the market.

Now we face a situation where banks are not willing to lend to each other and have therefore become dependent on the Fed for daily liquidity. This is a direct result of the Fed’s actions. Banks will not lend to each other because they don’t know which ones are really in trouble. The rise in inter-bank lending rates is a rational market response to a lack of information. Furthermore, why pay those inter-bank rates when the Fed or ECB is offering easier terms?

These opaque lending facilities are just part of the problem created by the Fed and Treasury. The Bear Stearns intervention started the process by raising expectations that the government would step in and broker deals that would normally be left to the private sector. By providing favorable terms to JP Morgan in the deal, private actors came to see an advantage in waiting to see if the Fed would provide similar terms again. The worry at the time was that a Bear Stearns failure would cause a collapse of the system, but after watching Lehman Brothers file bankruptcy one has to wonder if that worry was based on fear or facts. Lehman filed bankruptcy on a Sunday night and the market opened the next day and functioned as it should. Would a Bear bankruptcy have been different? We will never know, but I have my doubts.

Now markets are waiting on pins and needles as the politicians haggle over the details of the latest bailout attempt by the Fed and Treasury. This has introduced another roadblock to the re-capitalization and reorganization of the financial industry. Companies that are in need of capital are waiting to see if the plan will bail them out of their difficulties. If Hank Paulson is willing to pay an above market price for their bad loans, why should they dilute their equity now? Why not wait until they can offload the bad paper on the taxpayer and raise capital at a better price? Why take Tony Soprano terms when Uncle Sam is willing to let the taxpayer take the hit for you?

If this bailout goes ahead in its current form and the Treasury pays a high enough price to recapitalize the troubled banks, what has been accomplished? The plan may be enough to induce the banking sector to start lending again, although frankly, I don’t know why we would want institutions who have shown such poor judgment in the past to stay in that business. This plan short circuits the capitalist model which would allow the stronger, well run institutions to gain market share and/or expand profit margins. The long term effect will be to lower the overall return on capital in the financial services industry.

The government apparently believes that the key to economic recovery is to allocate limited resources in an inefficient manner. Does that make sense?

Paulson and Bernanke have testified to Congress that the market for the mortgage paper rotting on the balance sheets of bad banks is not working. They have not offered an explanation of why that market is not functioning except to blame the complicated nature of some of the securities. That explanation begs the question of how exactly the Treasury believes it will be any better at deciphering the mortgage market. A more logical explanation is not a lack of willing buyers, but a lack of willing sellers. The Fed has allowed institutions to use collateral of ever falling quality to secure loans from the Fed. If a bank can finance its activities through the Fed and keep the bad loans on the balance sheet, what incentive does it have to sell? Selling will reveal the true condition of the company and will also force other institutions to do the same under mark to market accounting. The Fed is the one keeping the market from functioning. The Treasury does not need to enter the market for it to start functioning; the Fed needs to leave the market.

Paulson has said that the cause of the current problems is the housing deflation, but that ignores the elephant in the living room. The housing bubble, which was concentrated in a relatively small number of states, was caused by the reckless actions of the Greenspan Fed. The consequences of that bubble have been exacerbated by the Bernanke Fed. The market is functioning as it should. It is the Fed that is not functioning correctly. There is no reason we had to go through either the bubble or the aftermath. We got into this mess because we tried to avoid the consequences of the internet bubble. We will only make things worse by trying to avoid the consequences of the housing bubble.

We are not on the verge of a new depression. The housing bubble collapse in California, Florida and a few other states is not enough to bring down the entire banking system. Investors who made mistakes in these markets should be held responsible and those who navigated the Fed-distorted market should be rewarded for their wisdom and prudence.

Enacting the Paulson plan will not allow that to happen and our economy will suffer for it in the long run. The Japanese tried to prop up failed banks in the aftermath of the bursting of their twin bubbles and the result was 15 years of stagnation. Why are we emulating a strategy that is a demonstrable failure? A better alternative would be to allow capitalism to work as it should and stop the interventions of the Fed in the money market.

Trust capitalism. It works.

Click here for information about Securities Based Lending / Stock Loans