samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
But in a globalised world with complex interrelations, we can no longer think solely in national terms. And especially when our financial system finances its ordinary activity not only through its Spanish customers but also with funds raised on the European market. The growing integration of the single financial markets can now be seen in many facets. First, some market segments, of particular importance for Spanish institutions, already enjoy full integration, and talking of the Spanish environment in this connection is meaningless. The integration of the interbank markets, the public debt markets and the markets for subordinated debt and preference share issues is, quite simply, complete. In the market segments of high-volume business financing, and equities, the degree of integration in the recent period has been substantial. And in other markets, such as retail banking, a lesser degree of integration is compatible with growing cross-border competition through M&As or branches and subsidiaries. In addition to this there is the practical importance and potential impact that European regulations emanating from Brussels have for Spanish institutions. Such regulations include most notably the IFRSs (International Financial Reporting Standards), the new Capital Requirements Directive (the Basel II Directive) and the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MIFID). On the basis of all these elements, the conclusion is that the prudential supervisor of Spanish credit institutions cannot disregard the growing practical importance of the European environment, which precludes thinking in strictly Spanish terms.

This is so with regard to the diagnosis of institutions, to the risks they face in the medium and long run, and to the instruments they have to mitigate such risks. Traditionally, the Spanish supervisory model has been able to combine a demanding stance in respect of institutions’ risks with incentives for best-practices management. This has positioned Spanish institutions among the most efficient and profitable in the world, and the Spanish economy has benefited from a highly competitive financial system. In the coming years the challenge is successfully to transmit these values in the European context, but also to assimilate the best international – and specifically European – supervisory practices. We must allow our institutions to harness the benefits the single financial market can offer them. Accordingly, in overseeing our institutions, we should limit the inevitable cost all supervision entails, applying prudential policies that encourage appropriate risk management, through the tempered use of restrictive or coercive measures in relation to banks’ activities, and through the use of more effective instruments for obtaining prudential information. The second consideration on the European market is the need for all European supervisors to redouble their efforts as regards mutual collaboration. Indeed, we must move from collaboration to cooperation, and from there to joint action and mutual trust, if we wish to be capable of properly supervising a European financial market with increasingly blurred national boundaries.
Capital inflows from non-residents are much less important, and in the latter half of the year, when the króna was appreciating the most, carry traderelated inflows were virtually non-existent. Estimating the equilibrium real exchange rate is very uncertain, however, and as a precaution, the Central Bank has leaned against potential overshooting of the exchange rate by buying large amounts of foreign currency. In this light, it is difficult to conclude otherwise than that the appreciation of the króna has been largely benign, in that it is based on economic fundamentals and contributes to a better balanced economy. The Central Bank’s scenario analysis indicates that if the Bank had used policy instruments to halt the currency appreciation in recent years, economic imbalances would have been much greater and inflation considerably higher. It has been a long time since the Central Bank of Iceland could fix the exchange rate unilaterally on a day-to-day basis. The exchange rate is determined in the interbank market and reflects underlying supply and demand for foreign currency. But the Bank can affect the exchange rate through interest rate decisions, foreign exchange transactions, and the application of capital flow management measures such as the one currently in place: the special reserve requirements on certain types of capital inflows. The exchange rate would have been much higher if the Bank had not applied these instruments and bought large amounts of foreign currency.

In the financial system, this involves putting in place more comprehensive regulatory frameworks, complemented by enhanced surveillance arrangements and relatively more intrusive supervisory oversight. It also involves having wide-ranging policy tools, including macro-prudential policies, to mitigate and manage the risks emanating from excesses in the financial system. As the experience in the advanced economies has shown, the source of imbalances can arise in a number in segments of the economy, including from the household, the financial and the public sectors. This underscores the importance of prudence; to ensure that growth is underpinned by sustainability and not excesses. A further lesson is to build buffers during the good times to better position us to withstand future shocks. Equally important for policy in the emerging economies is to put in place the necessary foundations for long-term growth. This involves few areas of significance. The first is to create a competitive environment that allows for greater economic flexibility. This includes reforms for a sequenced and gradual removal of distortions prevailing in the economy, lowering the costs of doing business, and to streamline the involvement of the public sector in businesses. The second is to accord importance to investments in modern infrastructure, and to enhance technological readiness that will enable the economy to prepare for the changing economic and financial landscape. Another area of significance is to ensure balanced and inclusive development.
I am certain that over time these places will be your most profitable centers as places like Lusaka will only yield narrow margins due to stiff competition. Chairperson, Zambia’s economy has shown some resilience in the midst of the global economic crisis. As you are aware, the economy has posted some marked improvements in macroeconomic indicators in 2009 with GDP growth estimated at 6.3%. Both inflation and the yield rates on Government securities have edged downwards while the exchange rate of the Kwacha against major international currencies has also shown some stability in the recent months. It is for this reason that I reiterate my appeal to all financial service providers including Access Bank Zambia Limited, to make some meaningful efforts in addressing the high cost of banking services in the country. It is also my expectation that the banking sector will take advantage of opportunities arising from the conducive macroeconomic environment in the country to create wealth and contribute to the development in our economy. Finally, let me extend my gratitude to the Board of Directors and the Managing Director of Access Bank Zambia Limited for inviting me to officiate at this launch of the two branches and the Visa Debit Card. I also wish to particularly thank the Access Bank, Group Deputy Managing Director, Mr Herbert Wigwe for having travelled all the way from Nigeria, to come and be part of this event today. It now gives me great pleasure and honour to declare the Acacia and Longarces branches officially launched.

The rapid expansion in activity in these economies has inevitably put pressure on the global price of energy and other raw materials, whose supply is relatively fixed at least in the short run. That is showing up in rising inflation world wide (Chart 5). So is it right to conclude, as some have, that the path of inflation is determined abroad? Certainly commodity prices have an effect in the short run. But it is domestic monetary policy – the decisions that the Monetary Policy Committee take each month, together with the overarching framework that defines our target – that determines the path UK inflation in the medium-run. The MPC will continue to assess the balance between the risks of higher inflation from the commodity cost shock and the downside risks to output (and to inflation in the medium term) from the credit crunch. But I can assure you that we will do whatever it takes to bring inflation back to target in the medium term.
First, strengthening talent development for individuals to achieve their fullest potential. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  •  MAS works in close partnership with the industry to provide training pathways and training opportunities for Singaporean finance professionals. The pursuit of continual learning related to financial sector competencies will help each and every one to attain mastery in their respective fields and achieve their fullest potential. •  MAS has a range of schemes to support the learning journey at all levels, from undergraduates and fresh graduates, to early/mid-career professionals, and to those in leadership positions. We have prepared a “SkillsFuture for the Financial Sector” infographic that you can find at your table which provides more information on these schemes. 9. For example, under the Finance Scholarship Programme (FSP), MAS supports early-mid career Singaporeans in developing specialist capabilities through post-graduate studies, in areas such as risk management, speciality insurance and quantitative finance. The recently launched Financial Sector SkillsFuture Study Award will also provide an additional channel of support to enable individuals to upgrade their skills through a wider range of specialist programmes. 10. Second, beyond competency-based training, cross-functional and international exposure is a key ingredient in building up leaders. We want to ensure that there are Singaporean professionals taking up leadership positions in the key financial institutions.

•  We also want to partner with financial institutions to create a working environment that is conducive to accommodate changes, be it in life-cycles or lifestyles, so that employees can manage demands better, both at work and from home. It is heartening to note that many financial institutions are offering flexible work arrangements, including flexible working hours, telecommuting and teleconferencing, as well as mentors, who can lend a helping hand, providing that needed uplift and moral support. 1  These are done under the Finance Associate Management Scheme (FAMS) and the International Postings Programme (iPOST). 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  12. Our collaborative efforts in developing talent in the financial sector will allow individuals opportunities to continually develop themselves and chart their own career progression, from students to mid-career professionals to leaders within the sector. Working hand-in-hand with FWA 13. Our efforts will be more effective and achieve greater success with the help of industry professionals like yourselves. Given the strong network FWA has established, you are well placed to play an important role in ensuring equal opportunity for all. I would like to touch on three areas in which I see tremendous potential to harness the collective experience and wisdom of the FWA. 14.
This challenge is not unique to Sri Lanka, but common to all countries which have opted to comply with Basel II requirements. To address this issue, banks in other countries have created a dedicated post in their institutions, i.e. Chief Risk Manager, who will not only look into the risks in the bank’s own portfolios, but also to the clients’ portfolios. The job of the Chief Risk Manager is to identify, evaluate risks and make recommendations to set out appropriate processes in managing the relevant risks. The processes should be acceptable to the senior management and the boards of the banks and also to the external auditors and the regulators. II. Appropriate risk evaluation techniques  Application of appropriate techniques for risk evaluation is an implementation issue. This is where the modeling comes into play. Modeling is used as a popular technique for identifying, quantifying and analyzing risks to enable the management of banking and financial institutions to decide on the allocation of capital. But one need not entirely depend on modeling and be out of reality as modeling will produce a statistical outcome depending on the data you feed into a set of equations or a simulation model. Modeling also involves issues such as focus on loss data, validation, calibration and issues on floors and ceilings. A practical issue on loss data is a different reporting system by banks, especially when it comes to large losses. Secondly, some institutions may not reveal large losses at all, but there are implications for operational risks. III.

The Basel  BIS Review 3/2007  5  Committee has now decided to pay greater attention to give a standard definition for capital, hopefully before the implementation begins in 2008.  International Comparison Many countries have not tackled all these issues associated with Basel II, but there is notable progress; some slowly, some moderately and some at a faster phase. For example, the Development Bank of Singapore (DBS), the largest bank in Singapore and the 5th largest group in Hong Kong with universal banking, providing full range of products and services for consumer, small and medium enterprises, corporate banking, investment banking, fund management, trade finance, cash management, securities and treasuries has taken a keen interest over the last 2-3 years in meeting the Basel capital adequacy requirements and to implement the same in 2008. At present, it has a Tier I capital ratio of 10.1% and a total capital ratio of 14.1%. The main philosophy behind the DBS’s approach is a balanced and enlightened one based on the management of capital. The approach is led by the DBS’s board and senior management and it is embedded within business of a whole group. It is constantly reviewed by supervisors and communicated to the markets. The DBS group has implemented a large-scale Basel II governance structure at several levels which is a success factor.
In Europe, the situation is even more disheartening, given the fact the output of many peripheral countries and the UK and France is not yet back to pre-crisis levels. Again, when faced with criticisms that the central banks had gone beyond their remit and capabilities by taking up the role of supporting economic growth, mainstream thinking argued that, even though QE was not as potent as it was hoped, the economic conditions post-crisis would have been a lot worse without these unconventional monetary policies. At this juncture, based on the empirical evidence available so far, it is hard to judge one way or the other whether the unconventional monetary policies have worked, or will work. 15. However, it should not take long to find out the answer. This is the fifth year of QE in the US; and the main issue now is not to what extent QE has helped economic recovery since 2009, but what happens when the Fed actually exits from these accommodative policies. Of course we don’t know exactly when the Fed will exit, which entails three stages: tapering in the asset purchase programme, ending the purchase programme and eventually raising policy rates. Chairman Bernanke and some FOMC members have made it clear the timing of these stages is still uncertain as it will depend on the actual pace of economic recovery and improvement in the job market. The three stages have long been known to the markets and are nothing new.

On a number of occasions in recent years I have expressed the view that although there were many factors leading to the Global Financial Crisis and the European Debt Crisis, the root cause of our present predicament is the excessive leverage and indebtedness built up over the past two to three decades in the household, corporate and government sectors in the advanced economies. During this period, the indebtedness of many industrial economies, such as the US, the UK, France and Germany increased steadily from 160% or 1.6 times of GDP to over 320% of GDP. Japan, of course, ranked the highest in this “league table” with over 450% of GDP. This is alarming not just because the stock of debt was rising, but the speed of the increase outpaced the economic or income growth of these economies by 100% over this period. What is even more depressing is that the aggregate public and  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  private sector indebtedness ratios actually increased even further after the financial crisis in most advanced economies except for Germany. 6. The increases were mostly due to a sharp pick up in public debt in most advanced economies after the Global Financial Crisis, as substantial amounts of public funds were deployed by the crisis-hit countries to salvage their financial systems, while the real economies were suffering from falling fiscal revenues with slow growth and rising public spending.
For this reason, it is useful to take a moment to recall the events of 1907. At the turn of the 20th century there was no Federal Reserve System. Banks then as today borrow short term in order to lend long term, making their profit on the difference in rates. At the time, the banks’ short-term liabilities took the form of demand deposits. If depositors began to worry about the quality of a bank’s loans and its ability to pay back its depositors, a run on the bank could develop. Once started, no bank on its own can stop a run by its depositors. To deal with these liquidity problems, the banks developed a clearinghouse system whereby member banks could backstop each other. This system would work well as  1  These views are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York or the Federal Reserve System. BIS Review 92/2010  1  long as banking problems were sufficiently localized so that unaffected member banks could provide liquidity to those member banks facing a liquidity problem. The problem in 1907 was that credit was also being supplied by trust companies that operated outside of the clearinghouse system. Many of these trusts, including the Knickerbocker Trust, lent money to speculators in the copper market, which was experiencing a boom. So long as copper prices kept rising, these loans paid off.

See Tobias Adrian, Christopher Burke and James McAndrews. 2009. “The Federal Reserve’s Primary Dealer Credit Facility”. Current Issues in Economics and Finance 15, no. 4 (August). 12  Gary Gorton. 2010. “Questions and Answers about the Financial Crisis”. National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper No. 15787, February. 13  Gorton, ibid. 6  BIS Review 92/2010  subprime “E. coli scare” had effectively been transmitted far and wide across financial markets. Let me turn now to the interventions used to combat the financial crisis. The Fed knew much less back in the autumn of 2007 than we know now about how far and wide the financial crisis was to spread and the implications this would have for the real economy. The initial response by the Fed was to use its traditional liquidity tools. On August 10, 2007, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) issued a statement indicating that the discount window was available as a source of liquidity to those firms that had access to the window. A week later, the FOMC cut the discount rate (the interest rate charged on discount window loans) by 50 basis points (a half of a percentage point) and extended the available term for these loans from overnight to 30 days. Given that the liquidity strains were affecting many firms that did not have direct access to the discount window, a key for this intervention to be helpful was that depository institutions would pass the liquidity on to those firms that needed it the most.
[The chief executive of Northern Rock, Mr Adam Applegarth, in unveiling his bank’s first-half results last July, announced that “the medium-term outlook for the company is very positive,” He spoke of a credit book that was “robust”. But, who would have guessed that less than two months later, Britain’s fifth-largest mortgage lender would be fighting for its life, its branches besieged by customers demanding their savings back? The run on Northern Rock is the most dramatic symptom of the contagion gripping the financial markets. Here was a bank that had grown rich from the innovations of recent years, using abundantly stocked wholesale markets to fund its lively growth, using those same markets to offload bits of it loan book as and when they became unattractive. But the very innovations on which Northern Rock thrived have savaged its business. The company does no lending overseas. Nevertheless, its fate was determined by the distant turmoil in America’s mortgage market. When that spilled over into the securities markets, the money markets that Northern Rock had depended on for years, dried up in a single day at the start of last August. The brave new world that enabled banks like Northern Rock to grow so fast is founded on “securitization” – the process that transform mortgages, credit-card receivables and other financial assets into marketable securities – and the innovation it spawned in “structured” products. This was a revolution that brought huge gains.

08.06.2023  7th ICO Sustainable Bond Forum Closing remarks ICO/ Madrid Margarita Delgado Deputy Governor  First of all, thank you for the invitation to participate in this 7th ICO Sustainable Bond Market conference. I am sure that the various panels have addressed recent developments in social and green bonds and the latest innovative approaches in sustainable finance. It would be interesting to take a look at the conclusions of the first edition of this conference to see just how much progress has been made in this market; huge strides for sure. For example, through the development of new instruments to mobilise the financial resources needed to achieve a net-zero economy and the goals set by the Paris Agreement. However, I am convinced we would also find that some of the challenges are still with us today, probably including the ones I am going mention in this address. Recent evolution of sustainable bond markets Developments in sustainable finance markets have been very significant. In recent years we have seen a surge in new bonds and instruments. According to the latest Climate Finance Monitor published by the IMF:1  - After decreasing in 2022, issuance of sustainable debt in 2023 Q1, considering green bonds and loans, social bonds, sustainability bonds and sustainability linked-bonds and loans, was in line with issuance in the previous two quarters, but was lower than in 2022 Q1. It should be noted that this was at the time of the banking sector turmoil in the United States and Europe.