Lithuania’s central bank said on Wednesday it had ordered the country’s sixth-largest bank, Snoras, to raise capital and imposed limits on its risk-taking… Snoras had to shore up capital to cushion risks, mainly from operations with non-residents, but the bank was stable… A Snoras bank spokesman said the bank’s capital adequacy ratio was 8.42 percent at the end of the second quarter, compared to the minimum requirement of 8.0 percent.
Oops. 8.42 means should the bank’s equity decline 5%, it will brake the minimum requirement. In the last 12 month Snoras lost 9.32mn litas or 1.6% of equity. More to follow.
New York state made claim for $1.2 billion in taxes, interest and penalties from Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. The state is seeking payment for tax bills dating to 1994, according to the claim form.
Bad luck. Would the head reached out Lehman as they did Goldman, they would have been received at least $1.2bn. Goldman Sachs paid $568m in taxes during the last 13 months. However, it obtained $13bn via AIG and $10bn from the government to keep going, making Goldman’s tax paid equal to 2.5% of the total sum. Not the best return on investment. Efficiency, efficiency, efficiency…
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Latvia has received 7% of its trailing 12 months GDP in IMF aid package, totaling $2.35bn. This is one of the tiniest tranches offered to struggling Eastern European countries and Iceland in nominal terms. Nevertheless, compared to FX reserves, Latvia is the third largest European debtor. And the first largest which kept it peg unchanged. In total, $10.8bn tranche was planned.
Apart from other things, that could mean Latvia is the sort of country, receiving external financial aid, which is most vulnerable to hot money outflows, followed by Bosnia. Historically, these countries couldn’t manage to increase their reserves in line with GDP expansion as a result of speculative money transferring and excessive credit growth. They simply are not able to cover all external obligations with current FX rate, since the money didn’t pass through the central banks. To partly offset loose policy of Latvia and reduce investors’ concerns, FX reserves of the country will grow by 63% thanks to IMF donations.
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Encouraged by a message from Bank of America with precise projection of Baltics devaluation I have decided to summarize why the analysts could be right in their estimations. Apart from inflation, economic recession and credit crunch, as stated by the BoA, I would like to stress other interrelated macro economic phenomena, which theoretically should be ended by a change in currency rates. Mainly, these are:
1. Hot money effect
2. Current account deficit
3. Reserves/ M2 + Gross external debt coverage
4. Low competitiveness
5. Parex Bank… and international relations
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Swedbank and Latvia are major friends today. If you listen to someone speaking about Latvia just wait a few moments and you will enjoy expressions about Swedbank. Or other way, if someone is articulating about Swedbank, she will certainly stick few words about Latvia. Causality is uncertain but base is obvious: Swedbank and Latvia are major problems of each other. Latvian currency is losing value, Swedbank – confidence.
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Does corporate governance matter? Here, in Baltics? Particularly, do listed companies of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania can increase their share prices through better corporate information disclosure practices? These questions were raised last spring in Stockholm School of Economics in Riga with help of Riga Stock Exchange by my partner Inga Zarecka, currently a student of Heriot-Watt University of Edinburgh, and me in Bachelor thesis writing process. Our intention was to evaluate numerically the effect of corporate governance on stock returns of listed companies in Baltic States.
Apart from identification of general links between information disclosure and corporations valuation, one can find stated questions especially interesting under current poor economic environment of the region. Good knowledge about companies is the first step to attract foreign capital to the countries, which is so required today for Baltic economies. But results we have found during the study process are not very promising. As could be expected more transparent companies might gain benefit which is greater than costs of preparing report which is expressed in excess stock returns. However, the opposite effect was observed in empirical analysis of the paper. The group of companies with poor reporting standards significantly outperform the companies with high quality corporate information disclosure.
Research Question
We were interested whether the companies of Baltic stock exchanges gain an extra advantage in their share price values through “best practice” reporting. In order to answer this question the authors investigated whether investors earn positive returns on a long “high information disclosure level” portfolio and a short “low information disclosure” portfolio.
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After spending some time on Delfi, I have once again faced an eye catching idea: Sampo Bank (one of the banks, operating in the Baltic states) offers its clients an amazing 18% annual rate on their half-year deposits, while regular time deposits for the same period earn around 4.3%. However, as a rule, there also should be some nasty things, which the bank takes for additional privileges it grants. And I was prepared for that. This time, it was an obligation to invest 75% of your portfolio in Danske Fund Global Emerging Markets, and the rest into the amazing deposit.
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The recent report by McKinsey has identified new financial markets participants, which might unexpectedly affect its development. Petrodollars, Asian center banks, hedge and private equity funds – these institutions, as the report mentions, have obtained a great ability to influence financial markets during the last 6 years. Besides, even under optimistic assumptions, in the same period ahead, the new power brokers might reach the size when other investment funds will have to adopt their behavior according to the new brokers’ actions.
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