Irish Bank Shares - reality or illusion?
June 19th, 2009
With the collapse in the Irish property market there has been a question over the major Irish banks. Collectively the banks have 90 Billion Euro in outstanding property development loans. These loans are apparently secured to various extents against development sites and the personal undertakings of property developers. In the past 18 months the property market has gone into a steep dive from which it has yet to recover, so development sites have lost a lot of value and property developers a lot of their net worth.
All commentators believe that some percentage of the 90 Billion will not be repaid, the only question is how much. If most of the loans will perform the banks can absorb the losses and recover. If the non performing loans are greater than the banks capacity to absorb losses IE the banks’ capital, the banks go bankrupt and get taken over.
The first step to recover this situation was to guarantee the banks’ deposits. BY placing the resources of the Irish state behind the banks at the end of September 2008, the Government was able to stop panicking depositors withdrawing all their cash.
The second step was to beef up the Banks ability to absorb loses, by pumping in a massive 7 billion in capital. The so called recapitalisation scheme announced in February 2009. In return for this cash the state secured an income stream and preference shares.
The latest step is for the state to force the banks to transfer the 90 Billion in development loans to a new state run agency, NAMA. Apparently NAMA will value all the banks development loans and take them over from the banks. The developers still have the same obligations to repay the 90 billion plus whatever interest payments were agreed. The banks will exchange their debts for government bonds and walk away from all property related debts. The state will have a property portfolio of worth tens of Billions of Euro, which can be managed over several years to maximise value for the tax payer.
Apparently AIB have 200 staff preparing documents to hand over to NAMA, and NAMA will have between 30 and 40 staff. So Nama must be planning to let the banks continue to manage the day to day operation of all these loans and simply provide oversight, and hold the risk. It will be interesting to see how Nama manages to align the interests of the taxpayer who will own the loans with the interest of the bank manager who has to negotiate with a developer about repayments.
One thing we do know is that NAMA will only pay less than 90 Billion for the loans, according to the Minister for Finance Nama will pay “at an appropriately written down value”. What is not clear right now is how much the state will pay for these loans?
If the write down is 50% reflecting the collapse in the price of development land, the banks will face a massive write down in loans, that will wipe out the banks’ capital. The only conceivable solution will be for the state to pump in replacement capital and take a major stake in the remaining banks. Or as the Minister says: “If the crystallisation of losses at any institution requires additional capital the State will insist on participation by way of ordinary shares in the relevant institution.” IE the state take control of the banks and today’s shareholders lose what little they have left.
If the write down is a more genteel figure, say 10%, then the banks can absorb the loss. Yes they will take a bit of hit on their capital ratios (See page 49) but they will be free of these dreadful development loads and profitable. Don’t forget that most divisions of the Irish banks were and are very profitable. Strip out the toxic development loans and the Banks look like very attractive cash generating businesses. In this scenario the poor taxpayer would be left with a huge portfolio of property loans that will never be repaid.
But the Minister has his “Sword of Damocles plan” to stop the banks getting away scot free: “The stream of income from the assets and the proceeds from the eventual sale of the underlying asset will accrue to NAMA. The State will incur a loss only if the assets transferred to the State cannot over the long term repay the investment made by the State in their purchase from the banks. However, if NAMA make a loss over the long term, the Government intends that a levy should be applied to recoup the shortfall.” So even if the banks negotiate a sweet heart deal with Nama there is a still the threat to the future shareholders of the banks.
In either scenario the bank shareholders will have to pay for the excesses of the Celtic Boom.
Yet BOI shares have rebounded from a low of 12 c to 193c valuing the company today at about 1.8 Billion euro. Similarly AIB has risen to 195c from a low of 27c in March, with a market capitalization of 1.6 Billion euro. Yet when we look at AIB for example they have a Tier 1 capital of 7.7 billion (about 9%) and they stand to write off 8.5 billion up to 2010. Remembering that the Tier 1 capital ratio cannot drop below 6-8% AIB can only afford to lose a few billion. If AIB have to write off more than a few billion which looks increasingly probably, they will be insolvent.
Logic seems to suggest that the share price should be on the floor. Yet the Stock Market is backing the company heavily to survive and thrive – is this blind optimism or am I missing something?














