Repurchase road

Courtesy : Repurchase road

Risks

While classic repos are generally credit-risk mitigated instruments, there are residual credit risks. Though it is essentially a collateralized transaction, the seller may fail to repurchase the securities sold, at the maturity date. In other words, the repo seller defaults on their obligation. Consequently, the buyer may keep the security, and liquidate the security to recover the cash lent. The security, however, may have lost value since the outset of the transaction, as the security is subject to market movements. To mitigate this risk, repos often are over-collateralized as well as being subject to daily mark-to-market margining (i.e., if the collateral falls in value, a margin call can be triggered asking the borrower to post extra securities). Conversely, if the value of the security rises there is a credit risk for the borrower in that the creditor may not sell them back. If this is considered to be a risk, then the borrower may negotiate a repo which is under-collateralized.

Credit risk associated with repo is subject to many factors: term of repo, liquidity of security, the strength of the counterparties involved, etc.

Certain forms of repo transactions came into focus within the financial press due to the technicalities of settlements following the collapse of Refco in 2005. Occasionally, a party involved in a repo transaction may not have a specific bond at the end of the repo contract. This may cause a string of failures from one party to the next, for as long as different parties have transacted for the same underlying instrument. The focus of the media attention centers on attempts to mitigate these failures.

In 2008, attention was drawn to a form known as repo 105 following the Lehman collapse, as it was alleged that repo 105s had been used as an accounting trick to hide Lehman’s worsening financial health. Another controversial form of repurchase order is the “internal repo” which first came to prominence in 2005. In 2011, it was suggested that repos used to finance risky trades in sovereign European bonds may have been the mechanism by which MF Global put at risk some several hundred million dollars of client funds, before its bankruptcy in October 2011. Much of the collateral for the repos is understood to have been obtained by the rehypothecation of other collateral belonging to the clients.

During September 2019, the U.S. Federal Reserve intervened in the role of investor to provide funds in the repo markets, when overnight lending rates jumped due to a series of technical factors that had limited the supply of funds available.

History

In the United States, repos have been used from as early as 1917 when wartime taxes made older forms of lending less attractive. At first, repos were used just by the Federal Reserve to lend to other banks, but the practice soon spread to other market participants. The use of repos expanded in the 1920s, fell away through the Great Depression and WWII, then expanded once again in the 1950s, enjoying rapid growth in the 1970s and 1980s in part due to computer technology.

According to Yale economist Gary Gorton, repo evolved to provide large non-depository financial institutions with a method of secured lending analogous to the depository insurance provided by the government in traditional banking, with the collateral acting as the guarantee for the investor.

In 1982, the failure of Drysdale Government Securities led to a loss of $285 million for Chase Manhattan Bank. This resulted in a change in how accrued interest is used in calculating the value of the repo securities. In the same year, the failure of Lombard-Wall, Inc. resulted in a change in the federal bankruptcy laws pertaining to repos. The failure of ESM Government Securities in 1985 led to the closing of Home State Savings Bank in Ohio and a run on other banks insured by the private-insurance Ohio Deposit Guarantee Fund. The failure of these and other firms led to the enactment of the Government Securities Act of 1986.

In 2007–2008, a run on the repo market, in which funding for investment banks was either unavailable or at very high interest rates, was a key aspect of the subprime mortgage crisis that led to the Great Recession.

In July 2011, concerns arose among bankers and the financial press that if the 2011 U.S. debt ceiling crisis led to a default, it could cause considerable disruption to the repo market. This was because treasuries are the most commonly used collateral in the US repo market, and as a default would have downgraded the value of treasuries, it could have resulted in repo borrowers having to post far more collateral. 

During September 2019, the U.S. Federal Reserve intervened in the role of investor to provide funds in the repo markets, when overnight lending rates jumped due to a series of technical factors that had limited the supply of funds available.

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