Seeking Relief, Banks Shift Risk to Murkier Corners

Banks have been shedding risky assets to show regulators that they are not as vulnerable as they were during the financial crisis. In some cases, however, the assets don’t actually move â€" the bank just shifts the risk to another institution.

This trading sleight of hand has been around Wall Street for a while. But as regulators press for banks to be safer, demand for these maneuvers â€" known as capital relief trades or regulatory capital trades â€" has been growing, especially in Europe.

Citigroup, Credit Suisse and UBS have recently completed such trades. Rather than selling the assets, potentially at a loss, the banks transfer a slice of the risk associated with the assets, usually loans. The buyers are typically hedge funds, whose investors are often pensions that manage the life savings of schoolteachers and city workers. The buyers agree to cover a percentage of losses on these assets for a fee, sometimes 15 percent a year or more.

The loans then look less worrisome â€" at least to the bank and its regulator. As a result, the bank does not need to hold as much capital, potentially improving profitability.

“I think we are going to see more of these type of trades in the U.S. given the demands by regulators to hold more capital,” said Kevin White, a former executive at Lehman Brothers who founded Spring Hill Capital Partners, which is working with banks to structure regulatory capital trades.

Citigroup, Credit Suisse and UBS declined to comment on their trades. Privately, however, bankers acknowledge that while these trades may be pushing risk into a less regulated corner of Wall Street, they also point out that the risk is being moved into a less systemic part of the financial industry than the big banks.

The rule-writing going on as part of the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory overhaul may prevent some of these trades, but bankers say this will simply force them to structure the trades differently.

Some regulators say they are concerned that in some instances these transactions are not actually taking risk off bank balance sheets. For instance, a financial institution may end up lending money to clients so they can invest in one of these trades, a move that could leave a bank with even more risk on its books.

Critics point to other reasons to worry. Most of these trades are structured as credit-default swaps, a derivative that resembles insurance. These kinds of swaps pushed the insurance giant American International Group to the brink of collapse in September 2008. Another red flag is that banks often use special-purpose vehicles located abroad, frequently in the Cayman Islands, to structure these trades.

“These trades allow the banks to go to regulators and say the risk is gone,” said Anat R. Admati, a professor of finance at Stanford University. “But it’s not gone at all; it’s just been pushed into a murky corner of the market.”

The trades can take many forms, but typically a bank will buy a credit-default swap on some of its loans from a special-purpose vehicle, which is financed by outside investors. If all goes well, the investors receive an annual fee for taking on this risk. But in the worst case, where the loans in the portfolio default, the insurance that the bank has bought kicks in and covers its losses. The investors on the other side are wiped out.

A number of American investment firms like Spring Hill Capital Partners have been trying to find investors for these deals. Glenn Blasius, another Lehman alumni, said he was raising money for the Ovid Regulatory Capital Relief Fund, which will invest in these trades.

The Orchard Global Capital Group has raised a fund to invest in regulatory capital trades, and the New Mexico Educational Retirement Board is among its investors.

In December 2011, Allan Martin, a representative with an investment consultant firm that advises pension funds, met with the New Mexican pension fund over investing through Orchard in a regulatory capital trade, according to the minutes of a board meeting.

Mr. Martin explained to the retirement board that these transactions had been created to allow the banks “to continue to hold the assets on their balance sheet” while selling some of the risk.

At the meeting, Jan Goodwin, executive director of the New Mexico Educational Retirement Board, asked about the use of credit-default swaps, which got A.I.G. into trouble. Mr. Martin admitted that the Orchard deal “has a little flavor of that” but said Orchard had done “a great deal” of due diligence on the underlying collateral, something he said A.I.G. often didn’t do.

In an interview, Mr. Martin said that “a lot of clients ask how this is different than A.I.G.,” and he said it was because Orchard had a better understanding of the risks involved in the assets it was dealing with.

An executive with Orchard did not respond to requests for comment.

Many major banks have structured these trades. In March, Credit Suisse completed a transaction named Lucerne, after the Swiss lake, in which it bought insurance on a 5 billion Swiss franc portfolio of small and medium-size Swiss business loans, according to people who were briefed on the matter but not authorized to speak on the record because they had signed confidentiality agreements.

Credit Suisse agreed to take a small percentage of the losses, and it lined up American and European investors willing, for an annual fee of roughly 10 percent, to assume the rest of the risk, these people say.

Citigroup cut a deal at the end of last year with the private equity firm Blackstone Group, which insured the big bank against a portion of the losses on a roughly $1 billion pool of shipping loans. The bank used a special-purpose vehicle in Ireland called Cloverie to facilitate the trade, according to people briefed on the matter but not authorized to speak on the record.

For its part, Blackstone put up about $100 million, or 12 percent of the value of the shipping portfolio, to cover any possible losses. If things go well, Blackstone will receive a return of about 15 percent, these people say. If the shipping loans go sour, Citigroup gets Blackstone’s money and the private equity firm loses its cash.

Credit Suisse received capital relief on the Lucerne deal, although the exact amount is not known. Citigroup was able to reduce by roughly 90 percent the amount of capital it needed to set aside to cover losses on the shipping portfolio.

One Citigroup executive with knowledge of this trade but not authorized to speak on the record said it was structured to reduce Citigroup’s exposure to shipping loans. The fact that it reduced the amount of capital the bank had to hold was “an added bonus.”

UBS also recently completed a regulatory capital trade, selling a piece of the risk on a portfolio of roughly 100 corporate loans, according to people who reviewed the transaction but who declined to speak publicly because they had signed confidentiality agreements.

And Citigroup is marketing a second risk capital trade involving shipping loans, according to people briefed on the matter.

“These trades are a good thing,” said Richard Robb, a New York money manager whose firm, Christofferson, Robb & Company, has been structuring regulatory capital trades for more than a decade. “The best way to protect the banks against this risk is to move it outside the banking system to wealthy institutions. No one will be coming to bail out our company or our investors if these trades backfire.”