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StreetwiseProfessor<>Clearing Fragmentation Follies: We’re From the European Commission, and We’re Here to Help You
Filed under: Clearing,Derivatives,Economics,Financial Crisis II,Politics,Regulation — The Professor @ 6:33 am

May 30, 2017

Earlier this month came news that the European Commission was preparing legislation that would require clearing of Euro derivatives to take place in the Eurozone, rather than in the UK, which presently dominates. This has been an obsession with the Euros since before Brexit: Brexit has only intensified the efforts, and provided a convenient rationalization for doing so.

The stated rationale is that the EU (and the ECB) need regulatory control over clearing of Euro-denominated derivatives because a problem at the CCP that clears them could have destabilizing effects on the Eurozone, and could necessitate the ECB providing liquidity support to the CCP in the event of trouble. If they are going to support it in extremis, they are going to need to have oversight, they claim.

Several things to note here. First, it is possible to have a regulatory line of sight without having jurisdiction. Note that the USD clearing business at LCH is substantially larger than the € clearing business there, yet the Fed, the Treasury, and Congress are fine with that, and are not insisting that all USD clearing be done stateside. They realize that there are other considerations (which I discuss more below): to simplify, they realize that London has become a dominant clearing center for good economic reasons, and that the economies of scale and scope clearing mean that concentration of clearing produces some efficiencies. Further, they realize that it is possible to have sufficient information to ensure that the foreign-domiciled CCP is acting prudently and not taking undue risks.

Canada is another example. A few years ago I wrote a white paper (under the aegis of the Canadian Market Infrastructure Committee) that argued that it would be efficient for Canada to permit clearing of C$ derivatives in London, rather than to require the establishment and use of a Canadian CCP. The Bank of Canada and the Canadian government agreed, and did not mandate the creation of a maple leaf CCP.

Second, if the Europeans think that by moving € clearing away from LCH that they will be immune from any problems there, they are sadly mistaken. The clearing firms that dominate in LCH will also be dominant in any Europe-domiciled € CCP, and a problem at LCH will be shared with the Euro CCP, either because the problem arises because of a problem at a firm that is a clearing member of both, or because an issue at LCH not originally arising from a CM problem will adversely affect all its CMs, and hence be communicated to other CCPs. Consider, for example, the self-preserving way that LCH acted in the immediate aftermath of Brexit: this put liquidity demands on all its clearing members. With fragmented clearing, these strains would have been communicated to a Eurozone CCP.

When risks are independent, diversification and redundancy tend to reduce risk of catastrophic failure: when risks are not independent, they can either fail to reduce the risk substantially, or actually increase it. For instance, if the failure of CCP 1 likely causes the failure of CCP 2, having two CCPs actually increases the probability of a catastrophe (given a probability of CCP failure). CCP risks are not independent, but highly dependent. This means that fragmentation could well increase the problem of a clearing crisis, and is unlikely to reduce it.

This raises another issue: dealing with a crisis will be more complicated, the more fragmented is clearing. Two self-preserving CCPs have an incentive to take actions that may well hurt the other. Relatedly, managing the positions of a defaulted CM will be more complicated because this requires coordination across self-interested CCPs. Due to the breaking of netting sets, liquidity strains during a crisis are likely to be greater in a crisis with multiple CCPs (and here is where the self-preservation instincts of the two CCPs are likely to present the biggest problems).

Thus, (a) it is quite likely that fragmentation of clearing does not reduce, and may increase, the probability of a systemic shock involving CCPs, and (b) conditional on some systemic event, fragmented CCPs will respond less effectively than a single one.

The foregoing relates to how CCP fragmentation will affect markets during a systemic event. Fragmentation also affects the day-to-day economics of clearing. The breaking of netting sets resulting from the splitting off of € will increase collateral requirements. Perverse regulations, such as Basel III’s insistence on treating customer collateral as a CM asset against which capital must be held per the leverage requirement, will cause the collateral increase to increase substantially of providing clearing services.

Fragmentation will also result in costly duplication of activities, both across CCPs, and across CMs. For instance, it will entail duplicative oversight of CMs that clear both at LCH and the Eurozone CCP, and CMs that are members of both will have to staff separate interfaces with each. There will also be duplicative investments in IT (and the greater the number of IT potential points of failure, the greater the likelihood of at least one failure, which is almost certain to have deleterious consequences for CMs, and the other CCP). Fragmentation will also interfere with information flows, and make it likely that each CCP has less information than an integrated CCP would have.

This article raises another real concern: a Eurozone clearer is more likely to be subject to political pressure than the LCH. It notes that the Continentals were upset about the LCH raising haircuts on Eurozone sovereigns during the PIIGS crisis. In some future crisis (and there is likely to be one) the political pressure to avoid such moves will be intense, even in the face of a real deterioration of the creditworthiness of one or more EU states. Further upon a point made above, political pressures in the EU and the UK could exacerbate the self-preserving actions that could lead to a failure to achieve efficient cooperation in a crisis, and indeed, could lead to a catastrophic coordination failure.

In sum, it’s hard to find an upside to the forced repatriation of € clearing from LCH to some Eurozone entity. Both in wartime (i.e., a crisis) and in peacetime, there are strong economies of scale and scope in clearing. A forced breakup will sacrifice these economies. Indeed, since breaking up CCPs is unlikely to reduce the probability of a clearing-related crisis, but will make the crisis worse when it does occur, it is particularly perverse to dress this up as a way of protecting the stability of the financial system.

I also consider it sickly ironic that the Euros say, well, if we are expected to provide a liquidity backstop to a big financial entity, we need to have regulatory control. Um, just who was supplying all that dollar liquidity via swap lines to desperate European banks during the 2008-2009 crisis? Without the Fed, European banks would have failed to obtain the dollar funding they needed to survive. By the logic of the EC in demanding control of € clearing, the Fed should require that the US have regulatory authority over all banks borrowing and lending USD.

Can you imagine the squealing in Brussels and every European capital in response to any such demand?

Speaking of European capitals, there is another irony. One thing that may derail the EC’s clearing grab is a disagreement over who should have primary regulatory responsibility over a Eurozone CCP. The ECB and ESMA think the job should be theirs: Germany, France, and Italy say nope, this should be the job of national central banks (e.g., the Bundesbank) or national financial regulators (e.g., Bafin).

So, hilariously, what may prevent (or at least delay) the fragmentation of clearing is a lack of political unity in the EU. This is as good an illustration as any of the fundamental tensions within the EU. Everybody wants a superstate. As long as they are in control.

Ronald Reagan famously said that the nine scariest words in the English language are: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” I can top that: “I’m from the EC, and I’m here to help.” When it comes to demanding control of clearing, the EC’s “help” will be about as welcome as a hole in the head.

http://streetwiseprofessor.com/?p=10538