証券化取引が急回復（CFOより）

Securitization: Back From the Dead

証券化取引が世界的に急回復しているという記事。英エコノミストからの転載記事です。

金融危機直後は証券化に対する風当たりは強かったのですが、欧州の金融当局者も、証券化を金融ツールとして認めて、規制強化にもブレーキをかけているようです。

Find the same regulator today and he is probably devising a ploy to resuscitate the very financial vehicle he was bemoaning five years ago. Enthusiasm for the once-reviled practice of transforming a future income stream into a lump sum today ― the essence of securitization ― is palpable. In Britain, Andy Haldane, a cerebral official at the Bank of England, recently described it as “a financing vehicle for all seasons” that should no longer be thought of as a “bogeyman.” The European Central Bank (ECB) is a fan, as are global banking regulators who last month watered down rules that threatened to stifle securitization.

こうした態度の変化の背景には、経済により多くの信用を供給したいという意図があるそうです。組み込まれた商品が問題だったのであり、証券化自体が悪いのではないという議論もなされています。

Why are regulators so keen on the very product that nearly blew up the global economy just five years ago? In a nutshell, policymakers want to get more credit flowing to the economy, and are happy to rehabilitate once-suspect financial practices to get there. Some plausibly argue it was the stuff that was put into the vehicles (i.e., dodgy mortgages) that was toxic, not securitization itself. This revisionist strand of financial history emphasizes that packaged bundles of debt which steered clear of American housing performed well, particularly in Europe.

金融危機前との違いは、投資家側の姿勢です。金融化商品の中身をよく検討するようになったそうです。

Perhaps the biggest change, however, is in investors’ attitudes. Before 2008, many fell for the sales pitch of the whizzes who hatched CDOs, ABSs and the like. Reassured by somnolent credit-rating agencies, which backed the bankers’ vision of handsome returns at virtually no risk, investors piled in with no due diligence to speak of. Aware of the reputational risks of messing up again, they now spend more time dissecting three-letter assets than just about anything else in their portfolio. Regulators will have to make sure that they retain this newfound discipline.