Europe's securitisation dreams stumble

摘要

The European Parliament has made a number of proposals that could hinder the development of Europe's securitisation market, shut down new sources of funding and make it harder for banks to transfer risk from their balance sheets. The European Commission and the Council of Ministers agreed a framework called simple, transparent and standardised (STS) securitisations - designed to be easy to evaluate by investors, straightforward to package, with mass market appeal and, crucially, safe. The proposals should reduce the cost of securitisation for issuers, namely banks, and open the way for institutional investors in Europe, such as insurance companies, to hold securitisations at lower capital charges - in an environment where they are anyway set to rise steeply under Basel rules from 2018 onwards.