Bank for International Settlements' Quarterly Review: Spotlight on Papers

The future of securitisation: how to align incentives? by Ingo Fender and Janet Mitchell:
This article reviews the recent collapse of global securitisation markets and the loss of investor confidence in them. It then sets out measures that could be taken to revive and strengthen the securitisation process, including mechanisms based on retention requirements for originators. It ends with a number of simple implications for policymakers and market practitioners.

Central counterparties for over-the-counter derivatives by Stephen G Cecchetti, Jacob Gyntelberg and Marc Hollanders:
Wider use of central counterparties (CCPs) for over-the-counter derivatives has the potential to improve market resilience by lowering counterparty risk and increasing transparency. However, CCPs alone are not sufficient to ensure the resilience and efficiency of derivatives markets.

The cost of equity for global banks: a CAPM perspective from 1990 to 2009 by Michael R King:
This article provides estimates of the inflation-adjusted cost of equity for banks in six countries over the period 1990-2009. This cost is estimated using the single-factor capital asset pricing model (CAPM), where expected stock returns are a function of risk-free rates and a bank-specific risk premium. Cost of equity estimates declined steadily across all countries from 1990 to 2005 but then rose from 2006 onwards. The fall in the cost of equity reflects (i) the decrease in risk-free rates over this period, and (ii) a decline in the sensitivity of bank stock returns to market risk (the CAPM beta) in all countries except Japan. The estimates show wide variation across banks, highlighting the difficulty of estimating expected returns using the CAPM.

The systemic importance of financial institutions by Nikola Tarashev, Claudio Borio and Kostas Tsatsaronis:
Prudential tools that target financial stability need to be calibrated at the level of the financial system but implemented at the level of each regulated institution. They require a methodology for the allocation of system-wide risk to the individual institution in line with its systemic importance. This article proposes a general and flexible allocation methodology and uses it to identify and quantify the drivers of systemic importance. It then illustrates how the methodology could be employed in practice, based on a sample of large internationally active institutions.