分拆大银行

The debate on bank reform has reached a curious moment. In one half of the conversation, regulators are discussing how to make banks safer for society. In the other half, equity investors are discussing how to make banks safer for their portfolios. If you put the two halves of the debate together, you soon realise that the regulatory conversation is topsy turvy – at least in one crucial respect.

有关银行改革的辩论进入了一个奇怪时刻。在辩论的一方，监管机构正在讨论如何让银行对社会更安全。在辩论的另一方，股市投资者正在讨论如何让银行对他们的投资组合更安全。如果你把这场辩论两方的观点综合在一起，你会很快意识到，有关监管的对话一片混乱，至少从一个关键的角度来看是如此。

The regulatory discussion generally presumes that “reasonable reform must leave banks intact. Breaking up too-big-to-fail lenders would do violence to the private sector; by contrast, demanding that banks raise extra capital is a market-friendly way to avoid taxpayer bailouts. But the actual conversation in the markets inverts this presumption. Among equity investors, breaking up banking behemoths is increasingly regarded as desirable; by contrast, boosting banks’ capital is anathema. If a “reasonable reform is one that goes with the grain of preferences in the market, busting up the banks may actually be more reasonable than forcing them to hold capital they absolutely do not want.

关于监管的讨论一般假定，“合理的改革必须让银行完好无损。分拆“大到不能倒的银行会损害私营部门；相比之下，要求银行提高资本金是一种对市场有利、避免纳税人掏钱纾困的方法。但市场真正的看法与这一假设相反。在股票投资者眼中，分拆银行巨擘的做法越来越被视为理想之举；相比之下，提高银行资本金则令人嫌恶。如果“合理的改革是与市场偏好相符的话，那么相对于迫使银行持有它们绝对不想持有的资本金，分拆银行的做法实际上可能更说得通。

It is easy to see why investors are eager to dismember the big banks. The promises of synergies trotted out by empire-building bosses in the 1990s have proved largely empty; clients don’t necessarily want to buy underwriting or wealth management services from the same supermarket that provides their ordinary loans. Meanwhile, the risks in empire building are evident. If even the respected JPMorgan Chase can lose billions on a sloppy trade in one wayward outpost, then imperial overstretch is everywhere. “Banks are increasingly regarded as unanalysable and uninvestable, says Mike Mayo, an analyst for CLSA on Wall Street.

我们很容易理解投资者为何希望分拆大银行。事实证明，上世纪90年代忙着建立帝国的银行老板们所鼓吹的协同效应，基本上变成了海市蜃楼；客户不一定想从提供普通贷款的同一家“超市购买承销或理财服务。与此同时，业务扩张的风险显而易见。如果连备受尊敬的摩根大通(JPMorgan Chase)都能因为一个任意妄为部门的草率交易而损失数十亿美元，那么银行帝国过度扩张的事实简直比比皆是。里昂证券(CLSA)华尔街分析师迈克·梅奥(Mike Mayo)表示：“人们越来越认为银行难以分析、不可投资。

Investors’ scepticism shows up in share prices. The stock market capitalisations of Citigroup and Bank of America languish at half and three fifths of tangible book value, respectively – liquidating Citi could hand shareholders a gain of 100 per cent. Indeed, because banks’ assets include infrastructure that could be sold for much more than book value, the bonanza might be even bigger. JPMorgan’s market capitalisation is roughly equal to its book value, but analysts reckon that the bank might be worth about a third more dismembered than intact.

投资者的怀疑态度反映到了股价上。花旗集团(Citigroup)和美国银行(Bank of America)的股票市值仅分别为有形账面价值的一半和五分之三，清算花旗将让股东获得100%的收益。实际上，由于银行资产包括能够以远高于账面价值的价格出售的基础设施，清算的收益可能会更高。摩根大通的市值大致与账面价值持平，但分析师预测，与保持原样相比，如果分拆，该银行的价值可能会提高三分之一左右。

If the attraction of bank break-ups is obvious, so is the hostility to regulatory efforts to require banks to raise more capital. Traditionally, banks have preferred to issue debt rather than equity because the government has perversely subsidised leverage. The double taxation of corporate profits has rendered debt tax-efficient; deposit guarantees have subsidised borrowing from retail customers; central bank liquidity has made short-term wholesale borrowing artificially cheap. However, these longstanding incentives for leverage have now been fortified by two new ones.

如果说银行分拆的吸引力显而易见的话，那么监管者要求银行提高资本金所面对的敌意同样显而易见。传统而言，银行青睐于发行债券而非股票，因为政府一直有意对杠杆提供补贴。对企业利润的双重征税使债务具有节税性；存款担保对来自零售客户的借款提供补贴；央行流动性人为压低了短期批发借款成本。而这些长期以来的杠杆激励现在又得到两项新激励的强化。

The first comes from the realisation of banks’ too-big-to-fail status. Since 2010, it has been clear that banks’ unsecured bondholders stand a good chance of being bailed out in a crisis. This has created a subsidy for bond issuance, distinct from the old subsidies for collecting deposits and issuing short-term paper. Whereas in the past it was only quasi-government lenders such as Fannie Mae that issued bonds cheaply, thanks to an implicit government backstop, now all the big banks enjoy this privilege.

第一种激励来自于对银行“大到不能倒地位的认识。自2010年以来，人们很清楚，银行无担保债券的持有者很有可能在危机中获得纾困。这实际上为债券发行提供了补贴，与过去吸收存款和发行短期票据的补贴不同。过去，由于隐性的政府支持，只有房利美(Fannie Mae)等准政府贷款机构才能以低成本发行债券，如今，所有大银行都可以享受这一特权。

While bond issuance has acquired a subsidy, equity issuance has grown more expensive. To limit moral hazard, crisis bailouts were crafted so as to make shareholders suffer; thus AIG’s shareholders were taken to the cleaners even as the banks that had incautiously bought its derivatives got off scot-free. As a result, equity investors today do not expect the government to rescue them. In contrast to bondholders, shareholders see banking behemoths as scarily complex, not comfortingly protected.

债券发行获得了补贴，而股票发行成本变得更为高昂。为了控制道德风险，有关方面制定的危机纾困计划让股东受损；因此，即使那些不慎购买了美国国际集团(AIG)衍生品的银行平安脱逃了，AIG的股东却损失惨重。结果，股票投资者现在不指望政府会拯救他们。与债券持有者相比，股票持有者觉得银行业巨擘复杂得让人害怕，而没有受到让人安稳的保护。

This too-big-to-fail effect shows up clearly in the prices of equity and debt. A non-financial corporation choosing between equity issuance and bond issuance could reasonably go either way. For example, Coca-Cola’s shares sell for 17 times next year’s expected earnings, meaning that equity investors demand a return of 5.8 per cent in order to buy the shares. Since Coke can issue long-term bonds at just over 4 per cent, equity is only 1.6 percentage points more costly. By contrast, Bank of America, JPMorgan, and Citigroup face a far larger wedge:7.5 percentage points, 10.4 percentage points and 11.8 percentage points, respectively. Banks frequently moan that equity is expensive. Thanks to regulators’ selective concern with moral hazard, they have a point.

“大到不能倒效应清楚地反映到了股票和债券的价格中。在发行股票和发行债券之间，非金融企业选择其中任何一种都可能是合理的。例如，可口可乐(Coca-Cola)股票的预期市盈率为17倍，这意味着，股票投资者要求购买该公司股票的回报率为5.8%。由于可口可乐能够以略高于4%的收益率发行长期债券，发行股票的成本仅高出1.6个百分点。相比之下，美国银行、摩根大通和花旗集团发行债券和股票的成本差距则高得多：分别为7.5个百分点、10.4个百分点和11.8个百分点。银行经常抱怨称，发行股票成本太高了。由于监管者特别担心道德风险，这也是有一定道理的。

Finally, as Stanford’s Anat Admati has noted, bank shareholders do not want to cut leverage because of a classic debt overhang effect. Normally, the owners of a healthy company may accept the expense of issuing equity rather than debt. They do so to reduce the risk of bankruptcy, since equity investors, unlike bond investors, agree in advance to forgo payouts in hard times. But when a company is already unhealthily indebted, creditors resemble owners; the odds of bankruptcy are rising, so bondholders also face the danger that their cash receipts may stop. In this circumstance of debt overhang, the effect of deleveraging is to cut the risk borne by bondholders – or by the government that backstops them. Equity holders get stuck with higher financing costs and no compensating fall in risk.

最后，正如斯坦福大学(Stanford)的阿纳特·阿德马蒂（Anat Admati)所指出的那样，由于典型的债务积压效应，银行股东不希望降低杠杆比率。一般而言，健康公司的所有者可能宁愿承担发行股票的费用，而非发行债券。他们这样做的目的是降低破产风险，因为与债券投资者不同，股票投资者会事先同意在艰难时期放弃红利。但当一家公司的负债情况已达到不健康水平，债权人就与所有者类似了；破产的可能性在上升，因此债券持有者也面临着拿不回钱的危险。在债务积压的情况下，去杠杆化降低的是债券持有者、或者为其提供支持的政府承担的风险。股票持有者却要承受更高的融资成本，而不会有风险下降作为补偿。

None of this means that bank regulators should stop insisting on more capital. On the contrary, bank investors’ losses from deleveraging will be society’s gain. But the capital adequacy police should be aware that they are pushing against powerful incentives to evade their edicts. If regulators want a “reasonable policy that will be accepted by the equity market, they should break up the giant banks.

所有这些都不意味着，银行监管者应停止坚持提高资本金的做法。相反，银行投资者因去杠杆化遭受的损失将给社会带来好处。但监督银行资本充足情况的机构应该明白，它们要对抗银行规避它们所颁法令的强大动机。如果监管者希望制定一项“合理的、为股市所接受的政策，他们应分拆大银行。

The writer, an FT contributing editor, is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations

本文作者是英国《金融时报》特约撰稿人、美国外交关系委员会(Council on Foreign Relations)高级研究员。