02 May 2014

ブルームバーグ・ニュース：ECB（欧州中央銀行）マリオ・ドラギ総裁によるABS（資産担保証券）購入案について、企業ではなく銀行が恩恵を受けるものと資産運用業界から批判

The ECB’s president is considering broad-based asset purchases, known as quantitative easing, to ward off deflation. He is also promoting the market for bonds backed by loans to small- and medium-sized enterprises in a bid to increase funding to the businesses that employ about 70 per cent of the European Union’s private-sector workers. Draghi is seeking to free up bank balance sheets by reviving Europe’s $2.1 trillion ABS market, which contracted 32 per cent since 2009 as regulators cracked down on the debt blamed for deepening the financial crisis. With lenders’ profits being squeezed by tougher capital rules, money managers are concerned they’ll use the opportunity to boost earnings.

Reviving Europe’s market for ABS, which Draghi last year described as "dead", is top of the political agenda because lending has been contracting for almost two years. The ECB and the Bank of England are asking regulators to ensure rules safeguarding the financial system don’t unnecessarily impair the securities’ use. The ECB has also signalled plans to ward off deflation may involve buying asset-backed debt to pump more cash into the economy. The headline annual inflation rate missed forecasts in rising to 0.7 per cent from 0.5 per cent in March, leaving investors to look to a May 8 meeting of central bank policy makers for further quantitative easing clues.

The ECB is no stranger to providing support to the region’s economy through the asset-backed debt market. The central bank holds 324.8 billion euros of notes as collateral for loans to the region’s banks, which is prompting Oldrich Masek, the London-based head of European ABS at JPMorgan, to question what benefits can be gained by having any more.

"The ECB initiated easing a long time ago through its repo program and direct purchases would do more or less the same thing in terms of monetary policy", said Masek. The global banking crisis followed by Europe’s sovereign turmoil transformed the region’s ABS market, prompting banks to issue and retain the securities to build their reserves of collateral eligible for ECB funding rather than selling to investors.

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