Bethany McLean

By Bethany McLean
The opinions expressed are her own.

There were a lot of things that were supposed to save Europe from potential financial Armageddon. Chief among them is the EFSF, or European Financial Stability Facility.

In the spring of 2010, European finance ministers announced the facility’s formation with great fanfare. In its inaugural report, Standard & Poor’s described the EFSF as the “cornerstone of the EU’s strategy to restore financial stability to the euro zone  sovereign debt market.”  The facility itself said in an October 2011 date presentation that its mission is to “safeguard financial stability in Europe.”

That of course hasn’t happened. And the evidence suggests that the EFSF may have only exacerbated the problems.

In theory, the facility is supposed to provide a way for a country that the market perceives as weak to still borrow money on good terms. The initial idea was that instead of the financially troubled country itself trying to sell its debt to live another day, the EFSF would be the one to raise the money and lend it to the country in question. The logic was simple: country X might be shaky, but the EFSF deserved a triple-A rating.

For all of its would-be financial firepower, the EFSF isn’t much to see—it’s just an office in Luxembourg with a German-born economist CEO named Klaus Regling, who oversees a staff of about 20. Its power—and that rating—is derived from the assumption that any debt it issues is guaranteed by the members of the euro zone. Initially, each member pledged unconditionally to repay up to 120% of its share of any debt the EFSF issued. (A country’s share is determined by the amount of capital it has in the European Central Bank.)

On paper, it all sounded great. The reality is that the EFSF wasn’t meant to be an active institution; it was supposed to be a fire extinguisher behind glass: never to be used. “The EFSF has been designed to bolster investor confidence and thus contain financing costs for euro zone member states,” wrote Standard & Poors in its initial report granting the triple A rating. “ If its establishment achieves this aim, we would not expect EFSF to issue a bond itself.”  Moody’s, for its part, wrote that the EFSF “reflects the political commitment of the euro zone member states to the preservation of the euro and the European Monetary Union.” That show of commitment alone was supposed to be enough to reassure the market.

In granting the EFSF the all-important triple-A rating, the rating agencies were somewhat cautious. They weren’t willing to assume, as they did with subprime mortgages, that any subset of debt guarantees—no matter how small—made by countries that weren’t themselves triple-A rated would be worthy of the gold-plated standard. Instead, they insisted that the EFSF’s loans had to be covered by guarantees from triple-A rated countries and cash reserves that the EFSF would deduct from any money it raised before it passed those proceeds on to the borrowing country. Based on that, euro zone members initially pledged a total of 440 billion euros ($650 billion) in guarantees. However, S&P said in its initial report that the EFSF would be able to raise less than $350 billion of triple-A rated proceeds.

Of course the euro zone did break the glass: the fire extinguisher was used, first in support of Ireland, and then Portugal, and then Greece. This summer, the European Powers That Be agreed to bolster the EFSF’s lending capacity by increasing the maximum guarantee commitments of the member states to 165%, instead of 120%. That was supposed to enable the EFSF to borrow up to 452 billion euros “without putting downward pressure on its ratings,” according to S&P.

As we now know, that’s not nearly enough money to end the crisis, especially given that the EFSF’s commitments to Ireland, Greece and Portugal leave the facility with a lending capacity of just 266 billion euros, according to a recent report from Moody’s. (I found it difficult to add up where the money went.)

Hence the politicians’ latest idea: leverage the EFSF’s remaining ability to borrow. Either have the EFSF offer first-loss insurance when a country issues debt, or turn its remaining capacity into the first-loss tranche of a collateralized debt obligation, which would raise money by selling bonds to other countries like China.

Besides being undersized for the job, there’s a core structural problem with the EFSF: It is only as strong as its triple-A members—not just Germany, which according to that October 2011 EFSF presentation contributes 29% of the total value of the EFSF’s guarantees, but also France, which contributes 22%, and the Netherlands, which contributes 6%.

Some financial analysts have questioned why any European country deserves a triple-A rating, seeing as EU members can’t print their own currency to pay off their debts.  As the financial turmoil has unfolded, it’s become clear that the only EU country the market views as a bona-fide triple-A is Germany. So as much of Europe crumbles, the EFSF’s triple-A, in the eyes of the market, is supported by a lone country. As one bond market participant says, “Eventually, only the German guarantee will matter, and it isn’t big enough to cover this.”

Indeed, Germany represents less than a quarter of the EU’s GDP, and obviously the nation’s economic health is to no small degree dependent on other members of the EU buying German goods. (Such interconnectedness was the whole point of the European Union—and that helps explain why the cost to insure against a German default has more than doubled since the summer, to $93,655 a year to insure $10 million of 5-year German debt.)

Not surprisingly, the EFSF’s last 3 billion euro bond sale, on Monday, November 7, met with what Moody’s called “significantly less demand” than a similar issue last spring. The issue was originally supposed to be 5 billion euros, and the spread, relative to German debt, that was required to lure investors was over three times the spread that was needed last spring. As Moody’s wrote in its report, “the demand for the EFSF bond issuance was dampened by a lack of confidence over the credit resilience of its guarantors.” Another way to think about this is that since the strength of the EFSF is dependent on the strength of its parts, the more individual countries have to pay to raise money, the more the EFSF itself has to pay.

In fact, it’s the definition of a vicious cycle. The EFSF’s funding costs rise along with those of its guarantors, and perversely, bond market participants say that the very existence of the facility also causes its guarantors’ cost to rise. That’s because there aren’t many investors who are interested in buying European sovereign debt these days. Those who are demand a very high premium if they’re going to buy, say, Italian debt instead of EFSF debt. This is why the EFSF was going to be hurtful, rather than helpful, if it had to be used: it competes with its very creators for investment, driving spreads higher and higher. One hedge fund manager calls the EFSF  a “self-inflicted killer” of Europe’s bond markets.”

The EFSF is due to expire, and is supposed to be replaced by the European Stability Mechanism, or ESM, in mid-2013.  But the ESM looks like it’s going to have same problem the EFSF does: Its finances depend on the very same countries that it is supposed to bail out.  In other parts of the world, this isn’t called stability; this is called a Ponzi scheme.

Photo: Men climbs steps next to a share price ticker at the London Stock Exchange in the City of London. REUTERS/Andrew Winning

By Bethany McLean
The opinions expressed are her own.

On Monday morning, MF Global, the global brokerage for commodities and derivatives, filed for bankruptcy.  The firm’s roots go back over two centuries,  but in less than two years under CEO Jon Corzine, whose stellar resume includes serving as the chairman of Goldman Sachs, as New Jersey’s U.S. Senator, and as New Jersey’s governor, MF Global collapsed, after buying an enormous amount of European sovereign debt. The instant wisdom is that he made a big bet as part of his plan to transform MF Global into a firm like Goldman Sachs, which executes trades on behalf of its clients, and also puts its own money at stake. Although the size of the wager has received a great deal of scrutiny, the accounting and the disclosure surrounding it have not–and may have played a role in the firm’s demise.

In the 24 hours since the filing, more ugly questions have piled up, with the New York Times reporting that hundreds of millions of dollars of customer money have gone missing, and the AP saying that a federal official says that MF Global has admitted to using clients’ money as its problems mounted. Whether this was intentional or sloppy remains to be seen; MF Global didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time.

At the root of MF Global’s current predicament was a simple problem:  the profits in its core business had declined rapidly.  That core business was straightforward, even pedestrian; what the firm calls in filings a “significant portion” of total revenue came from the interest it generated by investing the cash clients had in their accounts in higher yielding assets and capturing the spread between that return and what was paid out to clients. As interest rates declined sharply in recent years, so did MF Global’s net interest income, from $1.8 billion in its fiscal 2007 second quarter to just $113 million four years later. MF Global’s stock, which sold for over $30 a share in late 2007, couldn’t climb above $10 by 2009.

Enter Corzine in the spring of 2010, who had just lost his job as New Jersey’s governor to Chris Christie. He was brought in by his old pal and former Goldman partner Chris Flowers, whose firm had invested in MF Global. Fairly quickly, Corzine accumulated a massive net long sovereign debt position that eventually totaled $6.3 billion, or five times the company’s tangible common equity as of the end of its fiscal second quarter. I’m told Corzine’s move was highly controversial within the firm.  But no one overruled him, maybe because after all, he was Jon Corzine. In a mark of just how much Corzine mattered to the market, in early August, MF Global filed a preliminary prospectus for a bond deal, in which the firm promised to pay investors an extra 1% if Corzine was appointed to a “federal position by the President of the United States” and left MF Global.

Buying European sovereign debt may not have been just a bet that the bonds of Italy, Spain, Belgium, Portugal and Ireland would prove attractive. An additional allure may have been the way MF Global paid for the purchases, and thereby, the way the accounting worked. MF Global financed these purchases, as its filings note, using something called “repo-to-maturity.” That means the bonds themselves were used as the collateral for a loan, and MF Global earned the spread between the rate on the bonds, and the rate it paid its repo counterparty, presumably another Wall Street firm. The bonds matured on the same day the financing did.

The key part is that for accounting purposes, MF Global’s filings say the transaction was treated as a sale. That means the assets and liabilities were moved off MF Global’s balance sheet, even though MF Global still bore the risk that the issuer would default; that means the exposure to sovereign debt was not included in MF Global’s calculation of value-at-risk, according to its filings. And that also means MF Global recognized a gain (or loss) on the transaction at the time of the sale. The filings do not say how much of the gain was recognized upfront.  But if it were a substantial portion, then these transactions would have frontloaded the firm’s earnings.  That, in turn, may have helped cover the fact that MF Global’s core business was struggling.

MF Global’s public filings also don’t say how much this contributed to earnings. But one indication of the size of the repo-to-maturity deals comes in this small excerpt from MF Global’s most recent 10K, under the heading of “Off balance sheet arrangements and risk”:  “At March 31, 2011, securities purchased under agreements to resell and securities sold under agreements to repurchase of $1,495.7 million and $14,520.3 million, respectively, at contract value, were de-recognized.” (“De-recognized” means moved off the balance sheet.) Of that $14.5 billion, 52.6% was collateralized with sovereign debt. One way to get a sense of the ramp-up of “repo to maturity” transactions is to compare the figures to those as of March 31, 2010:  The securities sold under agreements to repurchase increased by some $9 billion.

Once the regulators and rating agencies began to zero in on all of this, it didn’t matter that the trade itself may not have been that risky. (The debt all matured by the end of 2012, and MF Global, of course, had financing in place until it matured.) But it was European sovereign debt, after all, and the trade was huge—and it appears that part of the concern may have been the accounting, and certainly the lack of disclosure. On September 1, MF Global said in a filing that the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) was requiring it to “modify its capital treatment” of the European sovereign debt trades.  According to an affidavit filed by MF Global’s president on the day of the bankruptcy, FINRA was “dissatisfied” with the September filing and  “demanded” that MF Global announce that it “held a long position of $6.3 billion in a short-duration European sovereign portfolio financed to maturity.” Words like “dissatisfied” and “demanded” aren’t good in the context of a regulator!

By the time the market opened on Monday, October 24^th, MF Global’s stock had already fallen 62% from its high of almost $10 following the announcement that Corzine was joining the firm. Then, Moody’s downgraded the firm’s debt, citing MF Global’s “inability to generate $200 million to $300 million in annual pretax earnings and keep its leverage within acceptable range.” In other words, Moody’s was concerned about the real profitability of the business. The next day, MF Global reported its $6.3 billion position, per FINRA’s demand, and also reported that it had lost almost $200 million in the quarter ended in September—in large part because the firm had reduced its deferred tax assets by $119.4 million, a sign that the accountants were saying there wouldn’t be a return to big profits any time soon. By the end of the week, all three rating agencies had downgraded MF Global debt to junk. Moody’s wrote that its downgrade “reflects our view that MF Global’s weak core profitability contributed to it taking on substantial risk in the form of its exposure to European sovereign debt.” MF Global’s stock finished the week down 67%.

The actual details of the run aren’t clear yet, but according to the CFO’s affidavit, the ratings downgrades “sparked an increase in margin calls,” which drained cash. Plans to sell all or part of the business fell through, reportedly because of the discovery of the missing cash. Another part of the explanation might be that potential buyers found out just how weak the core business was.

Of course, if Corzine made the trades for an accounting play, there’s a deeper question of why he would feel the need to do this. And isn’t that always the question in situations like this?

PHOTO: Jon Corzine, MF Global Holdings Ltd. CEO, leaves the office complex where MF Global Holdings Ltd have an office on 52nd Street in midtown Manhattan, October 31, 2011. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid