samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
However, a not inconsiderable risk capital or guarantees from the owners have also been required. Capital adequacy in the Swedish companies is shown in figure 3. If – or rather when – the owners’ requirements for return on the capital contributed increase this can be problem. Mortgage banks capital ratio and tier 1 capital ratio 1998. Per cent Capital ratio  Tier 1 capital ratio  • Handelsbanken Hypotek  10,7  10,0  • Stadshypotek  13,1  12,7  • Spintab  16,0  11,1  • SBAB  10,6  6,9  • Nordbanken Hypotek  10,5  8,8  • S E B BoLån  8,4  4,3  During the financial crisis in Sweden, the balance sheets were for obvious reasons insufficient to enable the institutions to borrow at competitive prices in the international market. This uncertainty on asset values was all too great for a while. Since then, however, creditworthiness has been continually increased, which is reflected in a gradually improved international rating. The Swedish housing loan institutions have today around 13% of their borrowing abroad. Traditionally the Swedish insurance companies and pension boards have been large purchasers of housing institution bonds. A part of the international borrowing has taken place in Europe, in particular in London, while the major part has originated from investors in the USA and Japan. An interesting issue is whether the ability to borrow in euro will make the Central European investors more interested in Swedish risks than before? It remains to be seen.

In the light of this, one cannot avoid wondering whether it is wise and really in the market’s interest to lock certain instruments into a separate legislation, which can be difficult to change once in place. If EMU really leads to the European market for borrowed capital being improved, which we all believe and hope, developments may move in a completely different direction. We shall have to see what the future holds in store. Securitisation The existing Swedish form for housing finance is, as pointed out, not necessarily a bad financing form in a developed European market with a uniform currency. On the contrary. The Swedish housing loan institutions are known and respected in the market, have large outstanding volumes that provide a basis for good liquidity and a transparent price formation and can moreover benefit from a rating that is improving as Sweden’s does. The great challenge from EMU is rather on a different level. When competition gradually increases, not only on the corporate side but also in the market for apartment blocks, tenant-owned apartments and houses, this will probably eventually reduce profit margins. The return on equity will then also fall. An issue that naturally arises is whether it is possible to find housing forms that make more economical use of equity provided by the owners. In my opinion, it is in this perspective that the discussion on securitisation is to be viewed.
Grab has taken this one step further: They’ve acquired over 300 merchants so that you can use the Grab wallet to pay for services these merchants offer. c. But it is China that is leading the way, with e-wallets making up 13% of consumer payments by value, compared to under 1% in markets like India and Indonesia6. Alibaba combined mobile emoney with facial recognition in their Hema chain of supermarkets. You walk into the store with your mobile phone, find something you like, scan the QR code to find out more information about it, and in the same app you can order the item, pay for it, and get it delivered in 30 minutes. JD.com does something similar in their staff convenience store at their headquarters: walk in, pick up a snack, walk out. B. EMERGING ISSUES IN DOMESTIC PAYMENTS The clearest benefit for consumers is greater convenience and an explosion of choice in how you want to pay. You can use the same e-wallet to get a ride to work, then to 8 . buy lunch at a café. You can use another e-wallet to order dinner. Merchants too, have more choices today on how they wish to get paid. Just step into any mall, and at many shops you see a range of QR codes representing different e-wallet schemes – some of them catering just to tourists from specific countries.

1 Draghi, M. Welcome address at the Eighth ECB Statistics Conference, Central Bank Statistics: moving beyond  the aggregates, Frankfurt am Main, 6 July 2016. www.ecb.europa.eu/press/key/date/2016/html/sp160706.en.html  3/3  Available  at  the  ECB  web  site:  BIS central bankers' speeches
A one dollar increase in the oil price gives an increase in GDP of almost 1% and most of it arrives as increased budget revenues. With large and varying budget revenues, the basis for determining central government expenditure and taxes from one year to the next may easily be impaired. If budget expenditure is allowed to fluctuate in step with oil prices, the result may be abrupt shifts and instability in the Norwegian economy. Changes in oil prices may then quickly influence wage and price expectations, the exchange rate and long-term rates. In that case it will be very demanding to achieve nominal stability. Short-term interest rates would have to be changed frequently and sharply and would generally reflect a high risk premium for the Norwegian krone. It is therefore important that the annual budgets are anchored in a long-term strategy that takes into account that oil revenues may fluctuate from one year to the next. In addition, it is advantageous if fiscal policy can be used to counter fluctuations in demand and production. Final words By hosting this workshop, we hope to take part in an exchange of new knowledge about the conduct of monetary policy. We hope that the workshop will be a fruitful experience for both researchers and monetary policymakers. 3  BIS Review 101/2000

To increase opportunities for women would require opportunities for education and for the acquisition of experience and exposure. After formal education, it is experience and expertise gained from coaching and mentoring that will further enhance an individual’s contribution to organisational effectiveness. In a modernised organisation, the performance management process demands the highest level of excellence and the ability to produce the desired results within the specified time frame. Transformed organisations involve a shift from task based activities to becoming result oriented with clear focus on the mandate and the key performance indicators. To incentivise such a performance driven organisation, recognition of performance and the reward system in place needs to be highly differentiated. For many countries this is yet to be put in place. The organisational transformation also needs to place value on life-long learning, knowledge management and opportunities for greater work life balance. Opportunities for learning are vital for capability development. Finally, new governance structures also are keys to ensure the rigour of how decisions are made in the organisation and that there are sufficient checks  BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  and balances to ensure the best decisions are made and the highest level of credibility and integrity are achieved. Challenges While the opportunities are immense for women in the public sector, yet few rise to leadership positions. While there is still a glass ceiling, as we advance forward into the future, the foundations are already in place for women to advance forward into leadership positions.
The Times They Are A'Changin' CBDC Lately, central bankers have rapidly started to tinker with something called the central bank digital currency or, shortly, the CBDC. Even though the idea seems new, it dates back to 1987 when the Nobel laureate James Tobin proposed the concept of a "deposited currency", or "a medium with the convenience of deposits and the safety of currency", to enhance payments and reduce the reliance on deposit insurance. [1] It was only 16 years later that the first CBDC came into production. Then, it was the Avant card, a stored-value card created by the Bank of Finland in 1993 capable of offline payments using a custom-made card reader device. A similar attempt ensued two years later in the UK called Mondex. However, none ever caught on due to costs and the fact that debit and credit card networks had become more efficient. [2] [3]  Or, maybe the times haven't changed enough to accept these changes. The environment needed to be more mature. But before I continue, let me move one step back. To understand the CBDC, we must remind ourselves how the current payment system works. Central banks provide the monetary base – cash for individuals and CB deposits for banks –both often referred to as "public money". The private sector has its own payment solutions - cards or mobile banking apps issued against the deposits, called "private money".

Ten years on: Lessons from Northern Rock  Speech given by Sir Jon Cunliffe, Deputy Governor Financial Stability, Member of the Monetary Policy Committee, Member of the Financial Policy Committee and Member of the Prudential Regulation Committee  Single Resolution Board Annual Conference, Brussels Friday 29 September 2017  1  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  th  This month marks the 10 anniversary of the failure of Northern Rock. The failure of a middle size British mortgage bank was followed by the collapse of much bigger and globally systemic banks. But the picture of the queues forming outside the branches of Northern Rock remains for many the picture of the start of the financial crisis. Prior to September 2007, I knew of the existence of bank runs from economic history books, the experience of developing and emerging economies and the film of Mary Poppins. Seeing one happen in London brought home that it is never different “this time”. The fundamental basis of the financial system is trust. And trust, if not properly managed and protected, can disappear instantaneously. And once that happened, the UK had no effective way of managing the failure of a bank. And no way to avoid the taxpayer having to step in to stop such a failure leading to the loss of critical services to the economy and contagion to other banks.
6  Staff of the International Monetary Fund has found related evidence with different methodologies; see C. Caceres, V. Guzzo and M. Segoviano (2010), “Sovereign spreads: Global risk aversion, contagion or fundamentals”, IMF Working Paper, no. WP/10/120, May, or R. Arezeki, B. Candelona and N. Sy (2011), “Sovereign rating news and financial markets spillovers: Evidence from the European debt crisis”, IMF Working Paper, no. WP/11/68, March. See also G. Amisano and O. Tristani (2011), “The euro area sovereign crisis: Monitoring spillovers and contagion”, ECB Research Bulletin 14 (http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/ other/researchbulletin14en.pdf). BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  CDS premiums.7 Estimation proceeds in two stages, using multivariate frequency decomposition. First, each CDS series is decomposed into long-, medium-, and short-run shocks. Second, the long- and medium-run shocks of Greece, which are those that produce lasting effects, are used to explain the CDS spreads of another euro area country, while conditioning on the country’s own shocks. If the additional explanatory variables improve forecast accuracy over a 100-day horizon, the results from the model may be interpreted as an indication that developments in Greece are causing contagion. The results suggest that with the escalation of the sovereign crisis in July 2011, contagion from Greece has become a source of systemic risk for several euro area countries. Spillovers from the Greek sovereign crisis can explain the sharp deterioration in the perceived creditworthiness of the other countries under EU/IMF programmes, Ireland and Portugal that occurred in July 2011.

This requires us to build up our own in-house teams of IT experts and to provide them with the proper training and guidance on what to look for. We are currently trying to do this and have recently hired an external consultant to help us to develop the right processes and techniques. This is part of a more general move to enhance our supervision to make it more sensitive to the various types of risk with which our banks are faced, and more focussed on the processes used for managing those risks. This becomes all the important in the New Economy, because although technological change presents obvious new opportunities to the banks, it also magnifies their risks in certain respects and increases the complexity of their business. Security risk is one clear example of this, as I have already mentioned. But increased liquidity and credit risk could be added to the list - the former because the internet will make it easier to move funds between banks at the touch of a button and the latter because banks may in future have a more transitory relationship with their customers. Technology risk is also a concern. With technology changing so rapidly, it becomes more vital that banks invest wisely in new systems and choose the right moment to do so. Early movers run the risk of being saddled with systems that do not work as promised, or which quickly become obsolete. Equally, there is the risk of being left behind by competitors if you wait too long.
Competition has required banks to control their costs and operate with a higher level of efficiency in order to ensure their survival. This has occurred both within national borders and internationally as well. The growing sophistication and internationalisation of financial institutions, combined with their greater sophistication, have contributed to the emergence of new risks and to the intensification and rapid transmission of previously existing risks. A number of bank managers have responded by improving their risk management systems and allocating more resources to risk identification, measurement and control. Banking supervisors face the challenge of responding meaningfully to these trends without curbing financial innovation, and I believe Basel II will help supervisors to meet this challenge. Greater cross-border co-operation among supervisors The final reason that I believe Basel II will contribute to financial stability is that the growing scope and complexity of banking groups and financial markets make it necessary to increase international co-operation between supervisors. While not new, this issue is increasingly important. Effectively combining the necessary supervision at the local level in the host country with effective supervision at the consolidated level in the home country requires greater co-operation, a more thorough exchange of information, and better knowledge of financial instruments and links within financial groups. BIS Review 34/2005  5  Basel II not only encourages such co-operation; its success will largely depend on the effectiveness of such co-operation. It will be necessary in the future to foster greater co-operation, co-ordination, and consistency in evaluating banks’ capital adequacy.

I think that Basel II recognizes the importance of a combination of micro and macro factors for achieving greater financial stability. Furthermore, I would say that Basel II incorporates some of the key basic principles that are also built in modern approaches to monetary policy: a flexible and forward-looking approach, anticipatory rather than reactive behaviour to risk, and the need to take into account market views. Looking into the future, we must direct our resources to ensure that banking supervision in the 21st century is more dynamic, more preventive, more flexible, more inclusive, and more transparent. We should continue adapting and learning. I believe the ultimate objective of financial stability increasingly requires co-operation and properly aligned incentives on the part of the industry, markets, and supervisors. Thank you. BIS Review 34/2005  7
Today, I would like to focus my remarks on three important shifts that I believe will underpin innovative risk management practices going forward. · First is the changing role and focus of risk managers in supporting business decisionmaking. ·  Second, is a shift from risk measures to risk narratives. · And third is an increasing emphasis on building resilience alongside the prevailing focus on averting risks. Changing role of risk managers One of the most important changes that corporations can make to strengthen risk management is to appropriately position the risk function to effectively support enhanced business decision making. An effective risk management function should interact with other business functions to deliver value. This itself is hardly an innovative idea. But you would be surprised (or maybe not) to learn that despite an increasing involvement of risk managers in business decision-making, poor alignment between decisions that are taken by business leaders, and the intentions of senior management and the board, continue to persist in many organisations. A common reason for this is the absence of, or a poorly defined risk appetite framework. And very few organisations, if any, have gone further to articulate their risk appetite for managing innovation specifically. This has important implications for risk managers. We cannot expect risk managers to be very helpful to business leaders who have explicit growth and revenue targets to meet, if risk managers are not themselves guided by a risk appetite that is equally well-defined.

The system is mandatory for all workers at companies that are part of the agreement. In this system, 4.5 per cent of labour income is allocated up to a cut-off point. If a worker earns more than the cut-off amount, 30 per cent of the difference is added to the original allocation.4 The individual also has a number of investment options to choose from in this system. Once again, the conclusion here is that pension wealth among those included in this pension scheme agreement is more evenly distributed than other wealth. Another way of expressing this is that many people in Sweden do not own their own home and have no financial assets but as a result of their labour income, they benefit from elevated asset prices as they have a share in funded collective pension systems. So how many of them are there? We don’t know at present, as no wealth statistics on the individual level have been recorded since 2007. A government inquiry has recently started to look at whether Sweden shall once again compile wealth statistics on the individual level.5 The Riksbank has been stressing for a long time the importance of reintroducing these statistics as soon as possible. An important reason is that household indebtedness has shown a rising trend in recent years and we now know more about households’ debt than about their assets.
My main message is that recent events support rather than oppose my opinion – namely that further regulation is not necessary as long as the major banks manage their exposures to the hedge funds correctly. I shall shortly discuss the role the hedge funds have played – and not played, during last autumn’s unrest in the financial markets. However, let me first say a few words as to why hedge funds as a group are important to financial stability. Hedge funds spread risk and improve pricing Hedge funds are, as we know, a broad concept and one that covers managers with a number of different working methods and strategies. However, a common denominator for most hedge funds is that they have as a goal an absolute return rather than a relative return and have far more liberal investment rules than other funds. Also they often have highly leveraged portfolios with the aim of increasing the return. For those who reflect on the way in which financial stability develops, and all central banks do so, it is, of course, of particular interest to see what advantages and risks hedge funds as a group can convey – once again being aware that this is an extremely heterogeneous group. In my opinion, hedge funds fulfil several useful functions in the financial markets. They contribute to spreading market risk and credit risk to more agents. Further, since they can act swiftly and in a flexible manner, they can often help improve the pricing for different products.

For example, hedge funds that specialise in identifying mispriced assets contribute to prices that better reflect the underlying risk. When the prices are more correct, resources may also be distributed more efficiently and the risks may be better managed. In new and complex markets hedge funds are often important agents with the opportunity and will to take on risk. This, in turn, improves liquidity in these markets. 1  According to the Barclay Hedge database. 2  See also the ECB Financial Stability Review 2007:2. BIS Review 11/2008  1  But there is often little insight But the flexibility hedge funds have also entails risk. Problems that arise in a hedge fund can spread to the fund’s counterparties; in the first instance the major banks. What is often highlighted in this context is the hedge funds’ high leverage. High leverage of course increases the risks, and the effects of a fund failing. Hedge funds are often accused of showing herd behaviour, that is, of imitating one another's behaviour and taking similar positions. But I find it difficult to believe that hedge funds to a greater extent than other investors just follow the prevailing trend. The fact that the required rate of return is absolute rather than relative in most hedge funds should actually indicate the opposite. Another source of concern is that there is little public insight into hedge funds’ activities. To take one example, in the United States hedge funds do not need to publicly report their activities or even register them.