Earlier today, Jefferies made it all too clear that anyone found holding any PIIGS sovereign debt exposure, net AND gross, will be promptly punished by the market all the way down to the circuit breaker halt, until such party promptly offloads its GROSS exposure to some other greater fool, in the process gutting its entire flow trading desk. Courtesy of Bloomberg we may now know who the market will focus its attention on next: "Barclays has $12.5 billion sovereign risk, $20.1 billion of risk to corporations and another $10.2 billion to financial institutions. It also has $66.6 billion of exposure in its retail business, 86% of which is to Spain and Italy. Group and corporate-level risk mitigation (sovereign CDS, total return swaps) may reduce these exposures." Or, as the Jefferies case study demonstrated so vividly, it may not, and the only option will now be for Barclays to post daily releases with CUSIP breakdowns which will achieve nothing until Barclays follows in Jefferies footsteps and liquidates (at what is likely a substantial loss) all or at least half of its gross exposure. Thank you Egan Jones for starting a hot-potato avalanche that will keep banks honest. And woe to the last PIIGS sovereign debt bagholder.From MF Global To Jefferies To... Barclays?
Tuesday, 8 November 2011
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