Business
US Says All SVB Deposits Safe, Creates New Backstop for Banks
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(Bloomberg) — US authorities raced on Sunday to stem jitters about the health of the financial system after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, introducing a new backstop for banks that Federal Reserve officials said was big enough to protect the nation’s deposits.
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The Treasury Department, Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. jointly announced the efforts, aimed at strengthening confidence in the banking system after SVB’s failure spurred worry about spillover effects. Concerns spread Sunday when state regulators closed New York’s Signature Bank.
Regulators acted swiftly on a number of fronts to contain the potential fallout:
- The FDIC said it will resolve SVB in a way that that “fully protects all depositors.” Similarly, “all depositors” at Signature will be made whole.
- The Fed also announced a new “Bank Term Funding Program” that offers one-year loans to banks under easier terms than it typically provides.
- The Fed also is relaxing terms for lending through its discount window, its main direct lending facility.
With a senior Treasury official cautioning there were other banks that appeared to be in similar situations to SVB and Signature, regulators’ top concern was assuring business and household depositors were made whole on their deposits. That may help avoid any additional bank runs that could heighten the risk of a recession, at a time when the Fed continues to raise interest rates to rein in inflation.
The steps taken by regulators to shore up the American financial sector drove US stock futures and Treasuries higher in early trading Monday in Asia, as investors reacted to the moves. Contracts on the S&P 500 were up 1.2% as of 10:02 a.m. in Tokyo. Bank stocks had plunged last week by the most since the March 2020 pandemic shock.
US regulators emphasized that taxpayers won’t be on the hook for protecting SVB and Signature deposits, and Treasury and Fed officials rejected the idea that the banks are being bailed out — showcasing the potential political sensitivities of the weekend moves. The regulators said shareholders and certain unsecured debtholders will be wiped out, while management was fired.
President Joe Biden, in a statement Sunday night, said the solution “protects American workers and small businesses, and keeps our financial system safe.”
For the Fed, the collapse of two powerhouse regional banks will test their resolve as they decide their next move on rates. Chair Jerome Powell just last week opened the door to a re-acceleration to a 50 basis-point hike at the Fed’s March 21-22 meeting. Financial ructions may raise the bar for such a move, however.
Costs of Tightening
More broadly, SVB’s meltdown offered an illustration of the costs of the Fed’s most aggressive tightening campaign since the early 1980s. The lender had plowed money into longer-term bonds, the market values of which dropped as yields soared. Meantime, SVB’s funding costs surged as the Fed kept jacking up its benchmark rate.
“While the Fed wants tighter financial conditions to restrain aggregate demand, they don’t want that to occur in a non-linear fashion that can quickly spiral out of control,” Michael Feroli, chief US economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co., wrote in a note to clients. “If they indeed have used the right tool to address financial contagion risks (time will tell), then they can also use the right tool to continue to address inflation risks — higher interest rates.”
JPMorgan retained its forecast for a quarter-point rate hike by the Fed in March.
In Powell’s two days of testimony before Congress last week, SVB didn’t come up once — speaking to the suddenness of the collapse. It is the second-largest US bank failure in history behind Washington Mutual in 2008. It followed a frenetic couple of days where its long-established customer base of tech startups yanked deposits.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the actions taken Sunday will protect “all depositors,” signaling aid to those whose accounts exceed the typical $250,000 threshold for FDIC insurance.
Fed officials said on a briefing call that their new facility was invoked under the Fed’s emergency authority allowing for the establishment of a broad-based program under “unusual and exigent circumstances,” which requires Treasury approval. It was unanimously approved by the Fed board.
The Treasury will “make available up to $25 billion from the Exchange Stabilization Fund as a backstop” for the bank funding program but the Fed doesn’t expect to draw on the funds, officials said.
Under the new program, which provides loans of up to one year, collateral will be valued at par, or 100 cents on the dollar. That means banks can get bigger loans than usual for securities that are worth less than that — such as Treasuries that have declined in value as the Fed raised interest rates.
Normally, under the Fed’s main lending program, known as the discount window, the Fed typically lends money at a discount against the assets provided as collateral, a practice known as haircuts. The Fed said the loans under the discount window, which are up to 90 days, will now be subject to the same collateral margins as the new bank funding facility.
The Fed’s emergency lending program is “an admission not only of systemic risk but that the risks are so unusual and exigent that failure to invoke this liquidity could create a financial crisis,” said Peter Conti-Brown, associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
–With assistance from Saleha Mohsin, Alister Bull and Tassia Sipahutar.
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The immediate panic around bank runs in the United States may have eased, but the flood of deposits that have exited regional banks over the past year has prompted a tightening of lending standards and raised the odds that the U.S. economy will tip into recession.
For now, at least, that cycle is much less of a concern in Canada.
As of March, overall deposits at U.S. banks shrank 2.4 per cent from the previous year, the steepest decline since the country’s savings and loan crisis in the 1990s.
When regional U.S. banks are drained of deposits by households and businesses worried about the safety of their money or seeking higher interest elsewhere, those banks make fewer loans to buy houses and fund small business. That, in turn, can lead to a credit crunch and recession.
The picture in Canada is different, with deposits continuing to rise, as Stephen Brown at Capital Economics noted this week.
While lending to businesses has tightened significantly in the U.S., he wrote, on balance Canadian banks have made loans only marginally more restrictive.
Canada’s banking sector “does not face the same immediate risks as in the U.S., since it is far more concentrated, limiting the chance that problems at small lenders will trigger a broader crisis of confidence,” he wrote.
Still, he warned, “indirect risks” from international bank problems will likely lead Canadian banks to be more cautious in their lending here, “particularly as their U.S. operations come under strain.”
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(Bloomberg) — US equity futures edged higher after a key measure of US inflation stepped down last month by more than expected, and consumer spending stabilized, suggesting the Federal Reserve may be close to the end of its rate-hiking campaign. The dollar pared an advance.
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Excluding food and energy, the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge — the personal consumption expenditures price index — rose 0.3% in February, slightly below the median estimate of 0.4% in a Bloomberg survey of economists. The overall PCE climbed by the same amount, Commerce Department data showed Friday.
Contracts on the S&P 500 rose 0.2%, while those on the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 were little changed, with the underlying index set for its strongest March since 2010.
Digital World Acquisition Corp., the blank-check firm taking Donald Trump’s media company public, rallied in premarket trading after he became the first former president to be indicted. Other Trump-linked stocks also gained.
If equities “end the week in the green, that’s a big deal considering how almost disastrous the rest of the month was,” said Craig Erlam, a senior market analyst at Oanda. “Confidence is easily shattered and difficult to restore and a positive end to the week would send a strong signal that investors are feeling reassured by the lack of turmoil recently.”
Treasury yields drifted following Friday’s US data at the end of a quarter of wild swings. Investors have struggled to adjust for banking collapses and the shifting outlook for interest rates amid high inflation and threats to economic growth. The two-year yield was around 4.11% Friday while the 10-year maturity was about 3.53%.
Traders remained on guard for any choppiness amid quarter-end rebalancing from pension funds and options hedging activity. And they continue to debate the extent to which policy makers may cut interest rates this year. Several strategists have said markets are wrong to expect easing by the Fed this year as the labor market remains robust, though US unemployment claims ticked up for the first time in three weeks.
A round of Fed speakers on Thursday suggested more monetary tightening was necessary to quell inflation, even after the collapse of three US banks this month. Boston Fed President Susan Collins said tightening was needed, while Richmond Fed President Thomas Barkin said the Fed can raise rates more if inflation risks persist.
In Europe, euro-area inflation plunged by the most on record, but a new high for underlying price gains highlighted the tricky task facing the European Central Bank as it decides how far to lift interest rates. Consumer prices rose 6.9% from a year ago in March — down from 8.5% in February and less than the 7.1% median estimate of economists, but core inflation quickened to 5.7%.
Elsewhere in markets, oil headed for a weekly surge of more than 7% amid ongoing disruption to Iraqi exports. Gold was little changed. And Bitcoin was set to end its best quarter since March 2021 with a gain of about 70%.
Key events this week:
- ECB President Christine Lagarde speaks, Friday
- New York Fed President John Williams speaks, Friday
Some of the main moves in markets:
Stocks
- S&P 500 futures rose 0.2% as of 8:49 a.m. New York time
- Nasdaq 100 futures were little changed
- Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.3%
- The Stoxx Europe 600 rose 0.5%
- The MSCI World index rose 0.7%
Currencies
- The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index rose 0.1%
- The euro fell 0.2% to $1.0882
- The British pound was little changed at $1.2381
- The Japanese yen fell 0.2% to 132.95 per dollar
Cryptocurrencies
- Bitcoin fell 0.3% to $28,060.63
- Ether rose 0.5% to $1,804.69
Bonds
- The yield on 10-year Treasuries declined two basis points to 3.53%
- Germany’s 10-year yield declined four basis points to 2.33%
- Britain’s 10-year yield advanced one basis point to 3.53%
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The federal government has approved the multi-billion-dollar merger of telecom companies Rogers and Shaw, but with conditions that Ottawa insists will make the deal good for consumers.
François-Philippe Champagne, minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, said at a press conference Friday that the government has approved the transaction first proposed in 2021.
As part of the deal, Shaw’s wireless business, Freedom Mobile, will be sold to Quebec-based Videotron.
The approval comes with 21 conditions that the government says are “legally enforceable,” including that Videotron will start to offer plans that are comparable to those currently available in Quebec, and they can’t sell the wireless assets to anyone else for at least a decade.
Videotron must also:
- Offer 5G service everywhere Freedom currently operates within two years;
- Offer service in Manitoba via MVNO;
- Increase the data allotments for existing Freedom customers by 10 per cent.
“Today, I am informing Canadians that I have secured on their behalf unprecedented and legally binding commitments from Rogers and Videotron. And, after imposing strict conditions, the spectrum licences of Freedom Mobile will be transferred to Videotron,” Champagne said.
“This transfer follows a series of agreements signed by the parties that will ensure that this new national fourth player will be in it for the long haul, be able to go toe to toe with the Big Three, and actually drive down prices across Canada.”
While Shaw’s mobile business and its more than two million wireless customers will move to Quebecor, Rogers will take over Shaw’s media and cable assets, most of which are in Western Canada. But Champagne says those assets are also subject to numerous conditions.
They include a requirement to create 3,000 jobs in Western Canada, to spend billions to expand its broadband and wireless networks, and also offer new lower cost plans to consumers in both.
“Should the parties fail to live up to any of their commitments, our government will use every means in our power to enforce the terms on behalf of Canadians,” Champagne said, noting that Rogers is subject to financial penalties of up to $1 billion for non-compliance.
Champagne pitched the deal as a win for consumers, but consumer watchdog group OpenMedia called the news “a dark day for the Internet in Canada.”
“Today’s decision is the largest blow to telecommunications competition and affordability we’ve ever seen,” executive director Laura Tribe said after the news came out.
The approval by government is the final step in a lengthy process that started 746 days ago, when Toronto-based Rogers first proposed to take over Calgary-based Shaw in a deal worth $26 billion.
The deal faced intense opposition from the start, and numerous regulatory agencies weighed in. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission signed off on the broadcasting part of the deal last year, but Canada’s Competition Bureau fought hard against the deal, but ultimately lost in a tribunal ruling last year.
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