美国银行吃席第三弹：一切都是生意 | 经济学人财经

Finance & economics | Buttonwood

财经板块 | 梧桐树专栏

英文部分选自经济学人20230506财经版块

Finance & economics | Buttonwood

财经板块 | 梧桐树专栏

What the First Republic deal means for America’s banks

第一共和银行的交易对美国银行来说意味着什么

Regulators had to make it sweet enough for JPMorgan Chase to bite

监管机构必须让摩根大通尝到甜头

“Life isn’t knights on horseback,” Logan Roy, boss of Waystar Royco, a media conglomerate, and lead character of “Succession”, a television drama, tells his son Kendall. He is warning his offspring that life is not about heroes. “It’s a number on a piece of paper. It’s a fight for a knife in the mud.”

“人生并非银鞍照白马”，在《继承之战（Succession）》里，主角洛根· 罗伊（Logan Roy）（剧中传媒巨头Waystar Royco的老板）如此教育儿子肯德尔（Kendall）。他试图告诫儿子，人生绝非英雄故事，而“不过是一张纸上的一个数字，是在泥泞中争夺刀子的战斗。”

As usual, the old bastard was right. Almost everything in finance can be reduced to a deal between two parties: a number on a piece of paper. Every time someone buys a share they are cutting a deal in which they swap cash for a slice of a company; a loan is a deal in which one party pays cash now in exchange for a stream of the stuff through time. Private-equity investing is the art of a good deal; so is buying property. Sometimes one person gets a good deal, another a bad one—but not all deals are zero-sum. A borrower and lender can both walk away happily from a paid-off mortgage.

老混球的话不中听，但是中用。金融领域中几乎所有东西都可以简化成两方之间的一笔交易：一张纸上的一个数字。购买股票的人做了一笔交易——他们用现金交换某个公司的一部分股份；贷款也是一笔交易——一方现在支付现金，并在日后逐渐收回。。私募股权投资是是达成良好交易的艺术，房产投资同理。有时一个人达成一笔好交易，另一个人则摊上一笔坏买卖——但并非所有交易都是零和博弈：抵押贷款得到偿还后，借方和贷方都会笑逐颜开。

A healthy financial system, then, is rife with deals. A sickly one is not. When the system is consumed by uncertainty or fear, it is just about impossible to get to a good deal. That another bank was willing and able to buy the troubled First Republic, which was seized by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (fdic) on May 1st, is therefore something of a relief. After a flurry of dealmaking early in the global financial crisis of 2007-09, there was too much uncertainty and fear for more to be done. And there was no deal to be cut for the entirety of Silicon Valley Bank (svb) in March. When your columnist recently asked a bank boss why he did not submit a bid for svb, he quipped back: “Other than the $20bn hole in its balance-sheet?”

因此，健康的金融系统中，交易无处不在。病态的金融系统则不然：不确定性弥漫或恐惧笼罩之时，达成一笔好交易可谓难于上青天。因此，当消息传出，有银行有意愿也有能力收购深陷泥潭的第一共和银行时（该银行于5月1日被联邦存款保险公司FDIC接管），所有人都松了一口气。2007-2009年全球金融危机早期的一连串交易后，市场弥漫着不确定性和恐惧心理，因而也不可能有更多的动作。今年3月，暴雷的硅谷银行（SVB）没有迎来任何愿意将其整体收购的买家。当笔者最近问一位银行老板为什么不出价收购硅谷银行时，他打趣道：“收购什么？资产负债表上200亿美元的大坑吗？”

The deal for First Republic includes three main parts: a payment of $10.6bn in cash by JPMorgan Chase to the fdic; a promise to pay $50bn more, plus interest at a fixed rate, over the next five years; and a credit guarantee for loans JPMorgan is assuming. It was structured in this manner to raise the sum JPMorgan was willing to pay, and thus to reduce the burden on the fdic, as is the regulator’s goal.

第一共和银行的交易主要包含三个部分：一是摩根大通向联邦存款保险公司支付106亿美元现金；二是承诺在未来5年内再支付500亿美元，外加固定利率的利息；三是为摩根大通承担的贷款提供信用担保。这样的交易方式旨在使摩根大通愿意支付更高的金额，从而减轻联邦存款保险公司的负担，这也是监管机构的目标。

At first glance, the guarantee and loan appear a little strange. First Republic’s problem was not, after all, that it offered bad mortgages to risky borrowers. Its problem was that it offered 30-year mortgages at a 1% interest rate to rich people, reportedly including Mark Zuckerberg—and that rates have jumped since, reducing the value of the loans. Yet the credit guarantee serves a purpose. It makes it easier for JPMorgan to meet regulatory capital requirements, one of which assigns risk-weights to assets. Loans with a guarantee attract a lower weight.

乍一看，担保和并购贷款显得有点奇怪。第一共和银行的问题不在于向高风险客户发放了不良抵押贷款；它的问题是给富有的客户群（据说包含马克·扎克伯格）提供了利率为1%、为期30年的抵押贷款，而利率自那以后急剧攀升，降低了这些抵押贷款的帐面价值。但是信用担保非常有用，它使得摩根大通能够符合监管的多项资本金要求，其中一项会为资产分配风险权重。而有担保的贷款风险权重更低。

注释：Serve a purpose: 起作用/非常有用。

The funding line also looks a little needless. JPMorgan has plenty of excess funding. It has more than $500bn in cash parked in deposits with the Federal Reserve and other banks. But to help fund the $180bn or so in assets JPMorgan is acquiring, the bank will take on $90bn in new deposits, $30bn in loans from the Federal Home Loan Bank, plus the $50bn loan from the fdic. In theory, JPMorgan could simply pay the fdic $60.6bn, rather than $10.6bn, in cash now and forgo the loan. The problem is that banks also have to meet liquidity-coverage ratios (a measure of the cash or cash-like assets a bank has on hand to meet an estimate of outflows in a stress scenario). Depleting even large cash buffers at the same time as acquiring new liabilities would ding the firm on this measure. On a call with analysts Jeremy Barnum, JPMorgan’s chief financial officer, described the loan as helping the bank both better match assets with liabilities as well as manage “liquidity consumption”.

并购中的资金支持看起来也是无关紧要，摩根大通有足够的剩余资金：它有超过5000亿美元的现金存在美联储和其他银行。但是为了吃进这笔1800亿美元左右的资产，摩根大通将吸纳900亿美元新增存款，从联邦住房贷款银行贷款300亿美元，再从联邦储蓄保险公司贷款500亿美元。理论上，摩根大通今天就可以向联邦储蓄保险公司支付606亿、而非106亿美元现金，且不需要贷款。但问题在于银行同时需要达到流动性覆盖比率要求（一种用来衡量银行的现金或类现金资产是否可以达到极端情况下现金流出需求的比率）。虽然摩根大通有大量现金缓冲，但消耗资金的同时又增加新的负债会影响其流动性覆盖比率。在与分析师的电话会议中，摩根大通的CFO Jeremy Barnum形容这笔贷款帮助了银行匹配资产与负债，同时控制了“流动性损耗”。

All of which is to say the deal was made just sweet enough for JPMorgan to bite. It did not harm the acquirer, and the acquirer did not have to raise new equity. Banks that bought assets from svb also did so without raising fresh capital. This makes sense: problems faced by banks become more acute when they take actions that might spark runs. Indeed, the collapse of svb followed an equity-issuance announcement. Crafting a deal that leaves an acquirer materially worse off might spark a similar situation. Such a scenario is hard to imagine at JPMorgan; it is not so elsewhere.

所有这些无不表明，这笔交易足以让摩根大通尝到甜头。收购方毫发无伤，也不必筹集新的股本。同样，收购硅谷银行（SVB）资产的那些银行也没有筹集新的资本。这是合乎逻辑的：当银行采取可能引发挤兑的行动时，它们面临的问题就更雪上加霜了。事实上，硅谷银行（SVB）的倒闭就是在宣布一笔股权融资之后。拟定一项使收购方情况严重恶化的交易可能会引发类似后果。摩根大通自然不用担心这样的问题，但并不是所有收购方都这样财大气粗。

注释：

craft：If something is crafted, it is made skilfully. 精心制作

Still, a deal that leaves an acquirer strong and minimises regulatory costs leaves nothing for shareholders or bondholders of the old bank. That is probably what they deserve, given they invested in an insolvent institution. But it is also why investors in other banks now fear they will meet a similar fate. The share and bond prices of other smaller regional banks have plunged. If this spooks depositors, more deals will be needed.

当然，在这笔收购方更加强大、监管成本最小化的交易中，被收购银行的股东和债券持有人就血本无归了。也许他们活该，谁让他们投资了一家破产机构。但也正因如此，其他银行的投资者们正在担惊受怕，唯恐自己将面临类似的命运。其他小型区域银行的股票和债券价格已经暴跌。如果储户受到惊吓，我们将会见证更多类似的交易。

注释：

spook：If people are spooked, something has scared them or made them nervous.使...吓坏; 使...紧张

翻译组：

Summerr，Stay hungry, stay foolish
Vivifang，女，外币债券交易员，满眼都是鲍威尔

Summer，女，QE在职，梦想能仗走天涯翻译/音乐 /健康

Vic，男，曾在52街和第6大道的投行人，目前的券商兵；市场和历史的学生

校对组：

Cecilia，今年过得贵妇一点
Claire，进进退退，摇摇摆摆，探索世界ing

Ithil，男，胡辣汤爱好者，世界杯冠军、三星阿根廷球迷