Defaultable Bonds. Thought of the Day 133.0

Defaultable bonds are bonds that have a positive possibility of default.  Most corporate bonds and some government bonds are defaultable.  When a bond defaults, its coupon and principal payments will be altered.  Most of the time, only a portion of the principal, and sometimes, also a portion of the coupon, will be paid. A defaultable (T, x) – bond with maturity T > 0 and credit rating x ∈ I ⊆ [0, 1], is a financial contract which pays to its holder 1 unit of currency at time T provided that the writer of the bond hasn’t bankrupted till time T. The set I stands for all possible credit ratings. The bankruptcy is modeled with the use of a so called loss process {L(t), t ≥ 0} which starts from zero, increases and takes values in the interval [0, 1]. The bond is worthless if the loss process exceeds its credit rating. Thus the payoff profile of the (T, x) – bond is of the form

1_{{LT ≤ x}}

The price P(t, T, x) of the (T, x) – bond is a stochastic process defined by

P(t, T, x) = 1_{{LT ≤ x}}e^{−∫_tT f(t, u, x)du}, t ∈ [0, T] —– (1)

where f (·, ·, x) stands for an x-forward rate. The value x = 1 corresponds to the risk-free bond and f(t, T, 1) determines the short rate process via f(t, t, 1), t ≥ 0.

The (T, x) – bond market is thus fully determined by the family of x-forward rates and the loss process L. This is an extension of the classical non-defaultable bond market which can be identified with the case when I is a singleton, that is, when I = {1}.

The model of (T, x) – bonds does not correspond to defaultable bonds which are directly traded on a real market. For instance, in this setting the bankruptcy of the (T, x₂) – bond automatically implies the bankruptcy of the (T, x₁) – bond if x₁ < x₂. In reality, a bond with a higher credit rating may, however, default earlier than that with a lower one. The (T, x) – bonds are basic instruments related to the pool of defaultable assets called Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs), which are actually widely traded on the market. In the CDO market model, the loss process L(t) describes the part of the pool which has defaulted up to time t > 0 and F(L_T), where F as some function, specifies the CDO payoff at time T > 0. In particular, (T, x) – bonds may be identified with the digital-type CDO payoffs with the function F of the form

F(z) = F_x(z) := 1_[0,x](z), x ∈ I, z ∈ [0,1]

Then the price of that payoff p_t(F_x(L_T)) at time t ≤ T equals P(t, T, x). Moreover, each regular CDO claim can be replicated, and thus also priced, with a portfolio consisting of a certain combination of (T, x) – bonds. Thus it follows that the model of (T, x) – bonds determines the structure of the CDO payoffs. The induced family of prices

P(t, T, x), T ≥ 0, x ∈ I

will be a CDO term structure. On real markets the price of a claim which pays more is always higher. This implies

P(t, T, x₁) = p_t(Fx₁(L_T)) ≤ p_t(F_x2(L_T)) = P(t, T, x₂), t ∈ [0, T], x₁ < x₂, x₁, x₂ ∈ I —– (2)

which means that the prices of (T, x) – bonds are increasing in x. Similarly, if the claim is paid earlier, then it has a higher value and hence

P(t, T₁, x) = p_t(F_x(L_T1)) ≥ p_t(F_x(L_T2)) = P(t, T₂, x), t ∈ [0, T₁], T₁ < T₂, x ∈ I —– (3)

which means that the (T, x) – bond prices are decreasing in T. The CDO term structure is monotone if both (2) and (3) are satisfied. Surprisingly, monotonicity of the (T, x) – bond prices is not always preserved in mathematical models even if they satisfy severe no-arbitrage conditions.

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Bear Stearns. Note Quote.

Like many of its competitors, Bear Stearns saw the rise of the hedge fund industry during the 1990s and began managing its own funds with outside investor capital under the name Bear Stearns Asset Management (BSAM). Unlike its competitors, Bear hired all of its fund managers internally, with each manager specializing in a particular security or asset class. Objections by some Bear executives, such as co-president Alan Schwartz, that such concentration of risk could raise volatility were ignored, and the impressive returns posted by internal funds such as Ralph Cioffi’s High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Fund quieted any concerns.

Cioffi’s fund was invested in sophisticated credit derivatives backed by mortgage securities. When the housing bubble burst, he redoubled his bets, raising a new Enhanced Leverage High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Fund that would use 100 leverage (as compared to the 35 leverage employed by the original fund). The market continued to turn disastrously against the fund, which was soon stuck with billions of dollars worth of illiquid, unprofitable mortgages. In an attempt to salvage the situation and cut his losses, Cioffi launched a vehicle named Everquest Financial and sold its shares to the public. But when journalists at the Wall Street Journal revealed that Everquest’s primary assets were the “toxic waste” of money-losing mortgage securities, Bear had no choice but to cancel the public offering. With spectacular losses mounting daily, investors attempted to withdraw their remaining holdings. In order to free up cash for such redemptions, the fund had to liquidate assets at a loss, selling that only put additional downward pressure on its already underwater positions. Lenders to the fund began making margin calls and threatening to seize its $1.2 billion in collateral.

In a less turbulent market it might have worked, but the subprime crisis had spent weeks on the front page of financial newspapers around the globe, and every bank on Wall Street was desperate to reduce its own exposure. Insulted and furious that Bear had refused to inject any of its own capital to save the funds, Steve Black, J.P. Morgan Chase head of investment banking, called Schwartz and said, “We’re defaulting you.”

The default and subsequent seizure of $400 million in collateral by Merrill Lynch proved highly damaging to Bear Stearns’s reputation across Wall Street. In a desperate attempt to save face under the scrutiny of the SEC, James Cayne made the unprecedented move of using $1.6 billion of Bear’s own capital to prop up the hedge funds. By late July 2007 even Bear’s continued support could no longer prop up Cioffi’s two beleaguered funds, which paid back just $300 million of the credit its parent had extended. With their holdings virtually worthless, the funds had no choice but to file for bankruptcy protection.

On November 14, just two weeks after the Journal story questioning Cayne’s commitment and leadership, Bear Stearns reported that it would write down $1.2 billion in mortgage- related losses. (The figure would later grow to $1.9 billion.) CFO Molinaro suggested that the worst had passed, and to outsiders, at least, the firm appeared to have narrowly escaped disaster.

Behind the scenes, however, Bear management had already begun searching for a white knight, hiring Gary Parr at Lazard to examine its options for a cash injection. Privately, Schwartz and Parr spoke with Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. founder Henry Kravis, who had first learned the leveraged buyout market while a partner at Bear Stearns in the 1960s. Kravis sought entry into the profitable brokerage business at depressed prices, while Bear sought an injection of more than $2 billion in equity capital (for a reported 20% of the company) and the calming effect that a strong, respected personality like Kravis would have upon shareholders. Ultimately the deal fell apart, largely due to management’s fear that KKR’s significant equity stake and the presence of Kravis on the board would alienate the firm’s other private equity clientele, who often competed with KKR for deals. Throughout the fall Bear continued to search for potential acquirers. With the market watching intently to see if Bear shored up its financing, Cayne managed to close only a $1 billion cross-investment with CITIC, the state-owned investment company of the People’s Republic of China.

Bear’s $0.89 profit per share in the first quarter of 2008 did little to quiet the growing whispers of its financial instability. It seemed that every day another major investment bank reported mortgage-related losses, and for whatever reason Bear’s name kept cropping up in discussions of the by-then infamous subprime crisis. Exacerbating Bear’s public relations problem, the SEC had launched an investigation into the collapse of the two BSAM hedge funds, and rumors of massive losses at three major hedge funds further rattled an already uneasy market. Nonetheless, Bear executives felt that the storm had passed, reasoning that its almost $21 billion in cash reserves had convinced the market of its long-term viability.

Instead, on Monday, March 10, 2008, Moody’s downgraded 163 tranches of mortgage- backed bonds issued by Bear across fifteen transactions. The credit rating agency had drawn sharp criticism for its role in the subprime meltdown from analysts who felt the company had overestimated the creditworthiness of mortgage-backed securities and failed to alert the market of the danger as the housing market turned. As a result, Moody’s was in the process of downgrading nearly all of its ratings, but as the afternoon wore on, Bear’s stock price seemed to be reacting far more negatively than those of competitor firms.

Wall Street’s drive toward ever more sophisticated communications devices had created an interconnected network of traders and bankers across the world. On most days, Internet chat and mobile e-mail devices relayed gossip about compensation, major employee departures, and even sports betting lines. On the morning of March 10, however, they were carrying one message to the exclusion of all others: Bear was having liquidity problems. At noon, CNBC took the story public on Power Lunch. As Bear’s stock price fell more than 10 percent to $63, Ace Greenberg frantically placed calls to various executives, demanding that someone publicly deny any such problems. When contacted himself, Greenberg told a CNBC correspondent that the rumors were “totally ridiculous,” angering CFO Molinaro, who felt that denying the rumor would only legitimize it and trigger further panic selling, making prophecies of Bear’s illiquidity self-fulfilling. Just two hours later, however, Bear appeared to have dodged a bullet. News of New York governor Eliot Spitzer’s involvement in a high-class prostitution ring wiped any financial rumors off the front page, leading Bear executives to believe the worst was once again behind them.

Instead, the rumors exploded anew the next day, as many interpreted the Federal Reserve’s announcement of a new $200 billion lending program to help financial institutions through the credit crisis as aimed specifically toward Bear Stearns. The stock dipped as low as $55.42 before closing at $62.97. Meanwhile, Bear executives faced a new crisis in the form of an explosion of novation requests, in which a party to a risky contract tries to eliminate its risky position by selling it to a third party. Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, and Goldman Sachs all reported a deluge of novation requests from firms trying to reduce their exposure to Bear’s credit risk. The speed and force of this explosion of novation requests meant that before Bear could act, both Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse issued e-mails to their traders holding up any requests relating to Bear Stearns pending approval by their credit departments. Once again, the electronically linked gossip network of trading desks around the world dealt a blow to investor confidence in Bear’s stability, as a false rumor circulated that Credit Suisse’s memo had forbidden its traders from engaging in any trades with Bear. The decrease in confidence in Bear’s liquidity could be quantified by the rise in the cost of credit default swaps on Bear’s debt. The price of such an instrument – which effectively acts as five years of insurance against a default on $10 million of Bear’s debt – spiked to more than $626,000 from less than $100,000 in October, indicating heavy betting by some firms that Bear would be unable to pay its liabilities.

Internally, Bear debated whether to address the rumors publicly, ultimately deciding to arrange a Wednesday morning interview of Schwartz by CNBC correspondent David Faber. Not wanting to encourage rumors with a hasty departure, Schwartz did the interview live from Bear’s annual media conference in Palm Beach. Chosen because of his perceived friendliness to Bear, Faber nonetheless opened the interview with a devastating question that claimed direct knowledge of a trader whose credit department had temporarily held up a trade with Bear. Later during the interview Faber admitted that the trade had finally gone through, but he had called into question Bear’s fundamental capacity to operate as a trading firm. One veteran trader later commented,

You knew right at that moment that Bear Stearns was dead, right at the moment he asked that question. Once you raise that idea, that the firm can’t follow through on a trade, it’s over. Faber killed him. He just killed him.

Despite sentiment at Bear that Schwartz had finally put the company’s best foot forward and refuted rumors of its illiquidity, hedge funds began pulling their accounts in earnest, bringing Bear’s reserves down to $15 billion. Additionally, repo lenders – whose overnight loans to investment banks must be renewed daily – began informing Bear that they would not renew the next morning, forcing the firm to find new sources of credit. Schwartz phoned Parr at Lazard, Molinaro reviewed Bear’s plans for an emergency sale in the event of a crisis, and one of the firm’s attorneys called the president of the Federal Reserve to explain Bear’s situation and implore him to accelerate the newly announced program that would allow investment banks to use mortgage securities as collateral for emergency loans from the Fed’s discount window, normally reserved for commercial banks.

The trickle of withdrawals that had begun earlier in the week turned into an unstoppable torrent of cash flowing out the door on Thursday. Meanwhile, Bear’s stock continued its sustained nosedive, falling nearly 15% to an intraday low of $50.48 before rallying to close down 1.5%. At lunch, Schwartz assured a crowded meeting of Bear executives that the whirlwind rumors were simply market noise, only to find himself interrupted by Michael Minikes, senior managing director,

Do you have any idea what is going on? Our cash is flying out the door! Our clients are leaving us!

Hedge fund clients jumped ship in droves. Renaissance Technologies withdrew approximately $5 billion in trading accounts, and D. E. Shaw followed suit with an equal amount. That evening, Bear executives assembled in a sixth-floor conference room to survey the carnage. In less than a week, the firm had burned through all but $5.9 billion of its $18.3 billion in reserves, and was still on the hook for $2.4 billion in short-term debt to Citigroup. With a panicked market making more withdrawals the next day almost certain, Schwartz accepted the inevitable need for additional financing and had Parr revisit merger discussions with J.P. Morgan Chase CEO James Dimon that had stalled in the fall. Flabbergasted at the idea that an agreement could be reached that night, Dimon nonetheless agreed to send a team of bankers over to analyze Bear’s books.

Parr’s call interrupted Dimon’s 52nd birthday celebration at a Greek restaurant just a few blocks away from Bear headquarters, where a phalanx of attorneys had begun preparing emergency bankruptcy filings and documents necessary for a variety of cash-injecting transactions. Facing almost certain insolvency in the next 24 hours, Schwartz hastily called an emergency board meeting late that night, with most board members dialing in remotely. Bear’s nearly four hundred subsidiaries would make a bankruptcy filing impossibly complicated, so Schwartz continued to cling to the hope for an emergency cash infusion to get Bear through Friday. As J.P. Morgan’s bankers pored over Bear’s positions, they balked at the firm’s precarious position and the continued size of its mortgage holdings, insisting that the Fed get involved in a bailout they considered far too risky to take on alone.

Its role as a counterparty in trillions of dollars’ worth of derivatives contracts bore an eerie similarity to LTCM, and the Fed once again saw the potential for financial Armageddon if Bear were allowed to collapse of its own accord. An emergency liquidation of the firm’s assets would have put strong downward pressure on global securities prices, exacerbating an already chaotic market environment. Facing a hard deadline of credit markets’ open on Friday morning, the Fed and J.P. Morgan wrangled back and forth on how to save Bear. Working around the clock, they finally reached an agreement wherein J.P. Morgan would access the Fed’s discount window and in turn offer Bear a $30 billion credit line that, as dictated by a last-minute insertion by J.P. Morgan general counsel Steven Cutler, would be good for 28 days. As the press release went public, Bear executives cheered; Bear would have almost a month to seek alternative financing.

Where Bear had seen a lifeline, however, the market saw instead a last desperate gasp for help. Incredulous Bear executives could only watch in horror as the firm’s capital continued to fly out of its coffers. On Friday morning Bear burned through the last of its reserves in a matter of hours. A midday conference call in which Schwartz confidently assured investors that the credit line would allow Bear to continue “business as usual” did little to stop the bleeding, and its stock lost almost half of its already depressed value, closing at $30 per share.

All day Friday, Parr set about desperately trying to save his client, searching every corner of the financial world for potential investors or buyers of all or part of Bear. Given the severity of the situation, he could rule out nothing, from a sale of the lucrative prime brokerage operations to a merger or sale of the entire company. Ideally, he hoped to find what he termed a “validating investor,” a respected Wall Street name to join the board, adding immediate credibility and perhaps quieting the now deafening rumors of Bear’s imminent demise. Sadly, only a few such personalities with the reputation and war chest necessary to play the role of savior existed, and most of them had already passed on Bear.

Nonetheless, Schwartz left Bear headquarters on Friday evening relieved that the firm had lived to see the weekend and secured 28 days of breathing room. During the ride home to Greenwich, an unexpected phone call from New York Federal Reserve President Timothy Geithner and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson shattered that illusion. Paulson told a stunned Schwartz that the Fed’s line of credit would expire Sunday night, giving Bear 48 hours to find a buyer or file for bankruptcy. The demise of the 28-day clause remains a mystery; the speed necessary early Friday morning and the inclusion of the clause by J.P. Morgan’s general counsel suggest that Bear executives had misinterpreted it, although others believe that Paulson and Geithner had soured both on Bear’s prospects and on market perception of an emergency loan from the Fed as Friday wore on. Either way, the Fed had made up its mind, and a Saturday morning appeal from Schwartz failed to sway Geithner.

All day Saturday prospective buyers streamed through Bear’s headquarters to pick through the rubble as Parr attempted to orchestrate Bear’s last-minute salvation. Chaos reigned, with representatives from every major bank on Wall Street, J. C. Flowers, KKR, and countless others poring over Bear’s positions in an effort to determine the value of Bear’s massive illiquid holdings and how the Fed would help in financing. Some prospective buyers wanted just a piece of the dying bank, others the whole firm, with still others proposing more complicated multiple-step transactions that would slice Bear to ribbons. One by one, they dropped out, until J. C. Flowers made an offer for 90% of Bear for a total of up to $2.6 billion, but the offer was contingent on the private equity firm raising $20 billion from a bank consortium, and $20 billion in risky credit was unlikely to appear overnight.

That left J.P. Morgan. Apparently the only bank willing to come to the rescue, J.P. Morgan had sent no fewer than 300 bankers representing 16 different product groups to Bear headquarters to value the firm. The sticking point, as with all the bidders, was Bear’s mortgage holdings. Even after a massive write-down, it was impossible to assign a value to such illiquid (and publicly maligned) securities with any degree of accuracy. Having forced the default of the BSAM hedge funds that started this mess less than a year earlier.

On its final 10Q in March, Bear listed $399 billion in assets and $387 billion in liabilities, leaving just $12 billion in equity for a 32 leverage multiple. Bear initially estimated that this included $120 billion of “risk-weighted” assets, those that might be subject to subsequent write-downs. As J.P. Morgan’s bankers worked around the clock trying to get to the bottom of Bear’s balance sheet, they came to estimate the figure at nearly $220 billion. That pessimistic outlook, combined with Sunday morning’s New York Times article reiterating Bear’s recent troubles, dulled J.P. Morgan’s appetite for jumping onto what appeared to be a sinking ship. Later, one J.P. Morgan banker shuddered, recalling the article. “That article certainly had an impact on my thinking. Just the reputational aspects of it, getting into bed with these people.”

On Saturday morning J.P. Morgan backed out and Dimon told a shell-shocked Schwartz to pursue any other option available to him. The problem was, no such alternative existed. Knowing this, and the possibility that the liquidation of Bear could throw the world’s financial markets into chaos, Fed representatives immediately phoned Dimon. As it had in the LTCM case a decade ago, the Fed relied heavily on suasion, or “jawboning,” the longtime practice of attempting to influence market participants by appeals to reason rather than a declaration by fiat. For hours, J.P. Morgan’s and the Fed’s highest-ranking officials played a game of high-stakes poker, with each side bluffing and Bear’s future hanging in the balance. The Fed wanted to avoid unprecedented government participation in the bailout of a private investment firm, while J.P. Morgan wanted to avoid taking on any of the “toxic waste” in Bear’s mortgage holdings. “They kept saying, ‘We’re not going to do it,’ and we kept saying, ‘We really think you should do it,’” recalled one Fed official. “This went on for hours . . . They kept saying, ‘We can’t do this on our own.’” With the hours ticking away until Monday’s Australian markets would open at 6:00 p.m. New York time, both sides had to compromise.

On Sunday afternoon, Schwartz stepped out of a 1:00 emergency meeting of Bear’s board of directors to take the call from Dimon. The offer would come somewhere in the range of $4 to 5 per share. Hearing the news from Schwartz, the Bear board erupted with rage. Dialing in from the bridge tournament in Detroit, Cayne exploded, ranting furiously that the firm should file for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11 rather than accept such a humiliating offer, which would reduce his 5.66 million shares – once worth nearly $1 billion – to less than $30 million in value. In reality, however, bankruptcy was impossible. As Parr explained, changes to the federal bankruptcy code in 2005 meant that a Chapter 11 filing would be tantamount to Bear falling on its sword, because regulators would have to seize Bear’s accounts, immediately ceasing the firm’s operations and forcing its liquidation. There would be no reorganization.

Even as Cayne raged against the $4 offer, the Fed’s concern over the appearance of a $30 billion loan to a failing investment bank while American homeowners faced foreclosures compelled Treasury Secretary Paulson to pour salt in Bear’s wounds. Officially, the Fed had remained hands-off in the LTCM bailout, relying on its powers of suasion to convince other banks to step up in the name of market stability. Just 10 years later, they could find no takers. The speed of Bear’s collapse, the impossibility of conducting true due diligence in such a compressed time frame, and the incalculable risk of taking on Bear’s toxic mortgage holdings scared off every buyer and forced the Fed from an advisory role into a principal role in the bailout. Worried that a price deemed at all generous to Bear might subsequently encourage moral hazard – increased risky behavior by investment banks secure in the knowledge that in a worst-case scenario, disaster would be averted by a federal bailout – Paulson determined that the transaction, while rescuing the firm, also had to be punitive to Bear shareholders. He called Dimon, who reiterated the contemplated offer range.

“That sounds high tome,” Paulson told the J.P. Morgan chief. “I think this should be done at a very low price.” It was moments later that Braunstein called Parr. “The number’s $2.” Under Delaware law, executives must act on behalf of both shareholders and creditors when a company enters the “zone of insolvency,” and Schwartz knew that Bear had rocketed through that zone over the past few days. Faced with bankruptcy or J.P. Morgan, Bear had no choice but to accept the embarrassingly low offer that represented a 97% discount off its $32 close on Friday evening. Schwartz convinced the weary Bear board that $2 would be “better than nothing,” and by 6:30 p.m., the deal was unanimously approved.

After 85 years in the market, Bear Stearns ceased to exist.

Private Equity and Corporate Governance. Thought of the Day 109.0

The two historical models of corporate ownership are (1) dispersed public ownership across many shareholders and (2) family-owned or closely held. Private equity ownership is a hybrid between these two models.

The main advantages of public ownership include giving a company the widest possible access to capital and, for start-up companies, more credibility with suppliers and customers. The key disadvantages are that a public listing of stock brings constant scrutiny by regulators and the media, incurs significant costs (listing, legal and other regulatory compliance costs), and creates a significant focus on short-term financial results from a dispersed base of shareholders (many of whom are not well informed). Most investors in public companies have limited ability to influence a company’s decision making because ownership is so dispersed. As a result, if a company performs poorly, these investors are inclined to sell shares instead of attempting to engage with management through the infrequent opportunities to vote on important corporate decisions. This unengaged oversight opens the possibility of managers potentially acting in ways that are contrary to the interests of shareholders.

Family-owned or closely held companies avoid regulatory and public scrutiny. The owners also have a direct say in the governance of the company, minimizing potential conflicts of interest between owners and managers. However, the funding options for these private companies are mainly limited to bank loans and other private debt financing. Raising equity capital through the private placement market is a cumbersome process that often results in a poor outcome.

Private equity firms offer a hybrid model that is sometimes more advantageous for companies that are uncomfortable with both the family-owned/closely held and public ownership models. Changes in corporate governance are generally a key driver of success for private equity investments. Private equity firms usually bring a fresh culture into corporate boards and often incentivize executives in a way that would usually not be possible in a public company. A private equity fund has a vital self-interest to improve management quality and firm performance because its investment track record is the key to raising new funds in the future. In large public companies there is often the possibility of “cross-subsidization” of less successful parts of a corporation, but this suboptimal behavior is usually not found in companies owned by private equity firms. As a result, private equity-owned companies are more likely to expose and reconfigure or sell suboptimal business segments, compared to large public companies. Companies owned by private equity firms avoid public scrutiny and quarterly earnings pressures. Because private equity funds typically have an investment horizon that is longer than the typical mutual fund or other public investor, portfolio companies can focus on longer-term restructuring and investments.

Private equity owners are fully enfranchised in all key management decisions because they appoint their partners as nonexecutive directors to the company’s board, and some- times bring in their own managers to run the company. As a result, they have strong financial incentives to maximize shareholder value. Since the managers of the company are also required to invest in the company’s equity alongside the private equity firm, they have similarly strong incentives to create long-term shareholder value. However, the significant leverage that is brought into a private equity portfolio company’s capital structure puts pressure on management to operate virtually error free. As a result, if major, unanticipated dislocations occur in the market, there is a higher probability of bankruptcy compared to either the family-owned/closely held or public company model, which includes less leverage. The high level of leverage that is often connected with private equity acquisition is not free from controversy. While it is generally agreed that debt has a disciplining effect on management and keeps them from “empire building,” it does not improve the competitive position of a firm and is often not sustainable. Limited partners demand more from private equity managers than merely buying companies based on the use of leverage. In particular, investors expect private equity managers to take an active role in corporate governance to create incremental value.

Private equity funds create competitive pressures on companies that want to avoid being acquired. CEOs and boards of public companies have been forced to review their performance and take steps to improve. In addition, they have focused more on antitakeover strategies. Many companies have initiated large share repurchase programs as a vehicle for increasing earnings per share (sometimes using new debt to finance repurchases). This effort is designed, in part, to make a potential takeover more expensive and therefore less likely. Companies consider adding debt to their balance sheet in order to reduce the overall cost of capital and achieve higher returns on equity. This strategy is sometimes pursued as a direct response to the potential for a private equity takeover. However, increasing leverage runs the risk of lower credit ratings on debt, which increases the cost of debt capital and reduces the margin for error. Although some managers are able to manage a more leveraged balance sheet, others are ill equipped, which can result in a reduction in shareholder value through mismanagement.

Velocity of Money

The most basic difference between the demand theory of money and exchange theory of money lies in the understanding of quantity equation

M . v = P . Y —– (1)

Here M is money supply, P is price and Y is real output; in addition, v is constant velocity of money. The demand theory understands that (1) reflects the needs of the economic individual for money, not only the meaning of exchange. Under the assumption of liquidity preference, the demand theory introduces nominal interest rate into demand function of money, thus exhibiting more economic pictures than traditional quantity theory does. Let us, however concentrate on the economic movement through linearization of exchange theory emphasizing exchange medium function of money.

Let us assume that the central bank provides a very small supply M of money, which implies that the value PY of products manufactured by the producer will be unable to be realized only through one transaction. The producer has to suspend the transaction until the purchasers possess money at hand again, which will elevate the transaction costs and even result in the bankruptcy of the producer. Then, will the producer do nothing and wait for the bankruptcy?

In reality, producers would rather adjust sales value through raising or lowering the price or amount of product to attempt the realization of a maximal sales value M than reserve the stock of products to subject the sale to the limit of velocity of money. In other words, producer would adjust price or real output to control the velocity of money, since the velocity of money can influence the realization of the product value.

Every time money changes hands, a transaction is completed; thus numerous turnovers of money for an individual during a given period of time constitute a macroeconomic exchange ∑_ip_iY_i if the prices p_i can be replaced by an average price P, then we can rewrite the value of exchange as ∑_ip_iY_i = P . Y. In a real economy, the producer will manage to make P . Y close the money supply M as much as possible through adjusting the real output or its price.

For example, when a retailer comes to a strange community to sell her commodities, she always prefers to make a price through trial and error. If she finds that higher price can still promote the sales amount, then she will choose to continue raising the price until the sales amount less changes; on the other hand, if she confirms that lower price can create the more sales amount, then she will decrease the price of the commodity. Her strategy of pricing depends on price elasticity of demand for the commodity. However, the maximal value of the sales amount is determined by how much money the community can supply, thus the pricing of the retailer will make her sales close this maximal sale value, namely money for consumption of the community. This explains why the same commodity can always be sold at a higher price in the rich area.

Equation (1) is not an identical equation but an equilibrium state of exchange process in an economic system. Evidently, the difference M –  P . Y  between the supply of money and present sales value provides a vacancy for elevating sales value, in other words, the supply of money acts as the role of a carrying capacity for sales value. We assume that the vacancy is in direct proportion to velocity of increase of the sales value, and then derive a dynamical quantity equation

M(t) - P(t) . Y(t)  =  k . d[P(t) . Y(t)]/d(t) —– (2)

Here k is a positive constant and expresses a characteristic time with which the vacancy is filled. This is a speculated basic dynamical quantity equation of exchange by money. In reality, the money supply M(t) can usually be given; (2) is actually an evolution equation of sales value P(t)Y(t) , which can uniquely determine an evolving path of the price.

The role of money in (2) can be seen that money is only a medium of commodity exchange, just like the chopsticks for eating and the soap for washing. All needs for money are or will be order to carry out the commodity exchange. The behavior of holding money of the economic individuals implies a potential exchange in the future, whether for speculation or for the preservation of wealth, but it cannot directly determine the present price because every realistic price always comes from the commodity exchange, and no exchange and no price. In other words, what we are concerned with is not the reason of money generation, but form of money generation, namely we are concerned about money generation as a function of time rather than it as a function of income or interest rate. The potential needs for money which you can use various reasons to explain cannot contribute to price as long as the money does not participate in the exchange, thus the money supply not used to exchange will not occur in (2).

On the other hand, the change in money supply would result in a temporary vacancy of sales value, although sales value will also be achieved through exchanging with the new money supply at the next moment, since the price or sales volume may change. For example, a group of residents spend M(t) to buy houses of P(t)Y(t) through the loan at time t, evidently M(t) = P(t)Y(t). At time t+1, another group of residents spend M(t+1) to buy houses of P(t+1)Y(t+1) through the loan, and M(t+1) = P(t+1)Y(t+1). Thus, we can consider M(t+1) – M(t) as increase in money supply, and this increase can cause a temporary vacancy of sales value M(t+1) – P(t)Y(t). It is this vacancy that encourages sellers to try to maximize sales through adjusting the price by trial and error and also real estate developers to increase or decrease their housing production. Ultimately, new prices and production are produced and the exchange is completed at the level of M(t+1) = P(t+1)Y(t+1). In reality, the gap between M(t+1) and M(t) is often much smaller than the vacancy M(t+1) – P(t)Y(t), therefore we can approximately consider M(t+1) as M(t) if the money supply function M(t) is continuous and smooth.

However, it is necessary to emphasize that (2) is not a generation equation of demand function P(Y), which means (2) is a unique equation of determination of price (path), since, from the perspective of monetary exchange theory, the evolution of price depends only on money supply and production and arises from commodity exchange rather than relationship between supply and demand of products in the traditional economics where the meaning of the exchange is not obvious. In addition, velocity of money is not contained in this dynamical quantity equation, but its significance PY/M will be endogenously exhibited by the system.

Why Should Modinomics Be Bestowed With An Ignoble Prize In Economics? Demonetization’s Spectacular Failure.

This lesson from history is quite well known:

Muhammad bin Tughlaq thought that may be if he could find an alternative currency, he could save some money. So he replaced the Gold and Silver coins with copper currency. Local goldsmiths started manufacturing these coins and which led to a loss of a huge sum of money to the court. He had to take his orders back and reissue Gold/Silver coins against those copper coins. This counter decision was far more devastating as people exchanged all their fake currency and emptied royal treasure.

And nothing seems to have changed ideatically even after close to 800 years since, when another bold and bald move or rather a balderdash move by the Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi launched his version of the lunacy. Throw in Demonetization and flush out black money. Well, that was the reason promulgated along with a host of other nationalistic-sounding derivatives like curbing terror funding, expanding the tax net, open to embracing digital economy and making the banking system more foolproof by introducing banking accounts for the millions hitherto devoid of any. But, financial analysts and economists of the left of the political spectrum saw this as brazen porto-fascistic move, when they almost unanimously faulted the government for not really understanding the essence of black money. These voices of sanity were chased off the net, and chided in person and at fora by paid trolls of the ruling dispensation, who incidentally were as clueless about it as about their existence. Though, some other motives of demonetization were smuggled in in feeble voices but weren’t really paid any heed to for they would have sounded the economic disaster even back then. And these are the contraband that could give some credibility to the whole exercise even though it has turned the world’s fastest-growing emerging economy (God knows how it even reached that pinnacle, but, so be it!) into a laughing stock of a democratically-elected dictatorial regime. What is the credibility talked about here? It was all about smashing the informal economy (which until the announcement of November 8 contributed to 40% of the GDP and had a workforce bordering on 90% of the entire economy) to smithereens and sucking it into the formal channel through getting banking accounts formalized. Yes, this is a positive in the most negative sense, and even today the government and whatever voices emanate from Delhi refuse to consider it as a numero uno aim.

Fast forward by 3 (period of trauma) + 8 (periods of post-trauma) months and the cat is out of the bag slapping the government for its hubris. But a spectacular failure it has turned out to be. The government has refused to reveal the details of how much money in banned notes was deposited back with the RBI although 8 months have passed since the window of exchange closed in January this year. Despite repeated questioning in Parliament, Supreme Court and through RTIs, the govt. and RBI has doggedly maintained that old banned notes were still being counted. In June this year, finance minister Arun Jaitley claimed that each note was being checked whether it was counterfeit and that the process would take “a long time”. The whole country had seen through these lies because how can it take 8 months to count the notes. Obviously there was some hanky panky going on. Despite statutory responsibility to release data related to currency in circulation and its accounts, the RBI too was not doing so for this period. They were under instructions to fiddle around and not reveal the truth. Consider the statistics next:

As on November 8, 2016, there were 1716.5 crore piece of Rs. 500 and 685.8 crore pieces of Rs. 1000 circulating the economy totaling Rs. 15.44 lakh crore. The Reserve Bank of India (RESERVE BANK OF INDIA ANNUAL REPORT 2016-17), which for a time as long as Urjit Patel runs the show has been criticized for surrendering the autonomy of the Central Bank to the whims and fancies of PM-run circus finally revealed that 99% of the junked notes (500 + 1000) have returned to the banking system. This revelation has begun to ricochet the corridors of power with severe criticisms of the government’s move to flush out black money and arrest corruption. When the RBI finally gave the figures through its annual report for 2016-17, it disclosed that Rs. 15.28 lakh crore of junked currency had formally entered the banking system through deposits, thus leaving out a difference of a mere (yes, a ‘mere’ in this case) Rs. 16,050 crore unaccounted for money. Following through with more statistics, post-demonetization, the RBI spent Rs. 7,965 crore in 2016-17 on printing new Rs. 500 and Rs. 2000 notes in addition to other denominations, which is more than double the Rs. 3,421 crore spent on printing new notes in the previous year. Demonetization, that was hailed as a step has proved to be complete damp squib as the RBI said that just 7.1 pieces of Rs. 500 per million in circulation and 19.1 pieces of Rs. 1000 per million in circulation were discovered to be fake further implying that if demonetization was also to flush pout counterfeit currency from the system, this hypothesis too failed miserably.

Opposition was quick to seize on the data with the former Finance minister P Chidambaram tweeting:

He further lamented that with 99% of the currency exchanged, was demonetization a scheme designed to convert black money to white? Naresh Agarwal of Samajwadi Party said his party would move privilege motion against Urjit Patel for misleading a Parliamentary Panel on the issue.

But, what of the immense collateral damage that the exercise caused? And why is the government still so shameless in protecting a lunacy? Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on asserted that any attempt to measure the success of the government’s demonetization exercise on the basis of the amount of money that stayed out of the system was flawed since the confiscation of money had not been the objective. He maintained that the government had met its principal objectives of reducing the reliance on cash in the economy, expanding the tax base and pushing digitisation. Holy Shit! And he along with his comrades is selling and marketing this crap and sadly the majority would even buy into this. Let us hear him out on the official position:

Denying that demonetisation failed to achieve its objectives, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the measure had succeeded in reducing cash in the economy, increasing digitisation, expanding the tax base, checking black money and in moving towards integrating the informal economy with the formal one. “The objective of demonetisation was that India is a high-cash economy and that scenario needs to be altered,” Jaitley told following the release of the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) annual report for the last fiscal giving the figures, for the first time, of demonetised notes returned to the system. The RBI said that of the Rs 15.44 lakh crore of notes taken out of circulation by the demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes last November, Rs 15.28 lakh crore, or almost 99 per cent, had returned to the system by way of deposits by the public.”The other objectives of demonetisation were to combat black money and expand the tax base. Post demonetisation, tariff tax base has increased substantially. Personal IT returns have increased by 25 per cent,” the Finance Minister said. “Those dealing in cash currency have now been forced to deposit these in banks, the money has got identified with a particular owner,” he said. “Expanding of the indirect tax base is evident from the results of the GST collections, which shows more and more transactions taking place within the system,” he added. Jaitley said the government has collected Rs 92,283 crore as Goods and Services Tax (GST) revenue for the first month of its roll-out, exceeding the target, while 21.19 lakh taxpayers are yet to file returns. Thus, the July collections target have been met with only 64 per cent of compliance. “The next object of demonetisation is that digitisation must expand, which climaxed during demonetisation and we are trying to sustain that momentum even after remonetisation is completed. Our aim was that the quantum of cash must come down,” Jaitley said. He noted in this regard that RBI reports that the volume of cash transactions had reduced by 17 per cent post-demonetisation. A Finance Ministry reaction to the RBI report said a significant portion of the scrapped notes deposited “could possibly be representing unexplained/black money”. “Accordingly, ‘Operation Clean Money’ was launched on 31st January 2017. Scrutiny of about 18 lakh accounts, prima facie, did not appear to be in line with their tax profile. These were identified and have been approached through email/sms. “Jaitley slammed his predecessor P. Chidambaram for his criticism of the note ban, saying those who had not taken a single step against black money were trying to confuse the objectives of the exercise with the amount of currency that came back into the system. The Finance Ministry said transactions of more than three lakh registered companies are being scrutinised, while one lakh companies have been “struck off the list”. “The government has already identified more than 37,000 shell companies which were engaged in hiding black money and hawala transactions. The Income-tax Directorates of Investigation have identified more than 400 benami transactions up to May 23, 2017, and the market value of properties under attachment is more than Rs 600 crore,” it said. “The integration of the informal with the formal economy was one of the principle objectives of demonetisation,” Jaitley said. He also said that demonetisation had dealt a body blow to terrorist and Maoist financing that was evident from the situation on the ground in Chhattisgarh and Jammu and Kashmir. One thing is for sure: more and more of gobbledygook is to follow.

One of the major offshoots of the demonetisation drive was a push towards a cashless, digital economy. Looking at the chart below, where there is presented the quantum of cashless transactions in some of the major economies of the world…one could only see India’s dismal position. Just about 2% of the volume of economic transactions in India are cashless.

Less cash would mean less black money…less corruption…and more transparency. Is it? Assuming it is, how far the drive would go on driving? But was India really ready to go digital? There were 5.3 bank branches per one lakh Indians in rural India 15 years ago. On the eve of demonetization, the figure stood at 7.8 bank branches per one lakh Indians. This shows that a majority of rural India has very little access to banks and the organized financial sector. They rely heavily on cash and the informal credit system. Then, we have just 2.2 lakh ATMs in the country. For a population of over 1.2 billion people, that’s a very small number. And guess what? A majority of ATMs are concentrated in metros and cities. For instance, Delhi has more ATMs than the entire state of Rajasthan. Given the poor penetration of banks and formal sector financial services in rural India, Modi’s cashless economy ambitions were always a distant dream. Then there are issues of related to security. Were the banks and other financial institutions technologically competent to tackle the security issues associated with the swift shift towards a digital economy? Can the common man fully trust that his hard earned money in the financial system will be safe from hackers and fraudsters? And the answer does not seem be a comforting one!

“Those dealing in cash currency have now been forced to deposit these in banks, the money has got identified with a particular owner” So surveillance was the reason. Makes sense why they are so desperate to link aadhaar to bank accounts. Some researchers have considered couple of factors which have actually caused demonetization in India. First one includes the refinancing of public sector banks in India. 80% of banks in India are run by government, during the last two decades these banks have been used to lend out loans to corporations which stink of cronyism. These politically-affiliated businesses did not pay back their money which has resulted into the accumulation of huge amount of non-performing assets (NPAs) within these banks. From last three years warning signals were continuously coming about their collapse. Through demonetization millions of poor people have deposited their meagre sums within these banks which have resulted into their refinancing, so that they can now lend the money to the same guys who earlier do not paid back their loans. sounds pretty simplistic, right? Sad, but true, it is this simple. The second factor is the influence of technological and communications companies on the government, as these companies are among the fastest growing ones during the last two decades. Making payments through digital gate ways will be very beneficial for their growth. They can expand their influence over the whole human race. The statements from technological giants like Apple, Microsoft, MasterCard, Facebook, Google etc. clearly shows their intentions behind cashless society. Tim Cook the chief executive of Apple said that “next generation of children will not know what money is” as he promotes “apple pay” as an alternative. MasterCard executives consider apple pay as another step towards cashless society. MasterCard is mining Facebook users data to get consumer behaviour information which it can sell to banks. Bill gates said India will shift to digital payments, as the digital world lets you track things quickly. The acquisition of artificial intelligence companies by Google, Facebook and Microsoft is also on its peak. Over 200 private companies using AI algorithms across different verticals have been acquired since 2012, with over 30 acquisitions taking place in Q1 of 2017 alone. Apple acquired voice recognition firm “Vocal IQ and real face Google has acquired deep learning and neural network, Facebook acquired Masquerade Technologies and Zurich Eye. So what is actually going on, as private corporations and governments are desperate to introduce cashless economy through biometric payment system.

No black money was unearthed by Modi’s historic folly. Terrorism has also not gone down after demonetization and neither has circulation of counterfeit currency. So, it was a failure on all counts, a point that has been predicted by economists worldwide. What the note ban did was cause untold suffering and misery to common people, destroy livelihoods of millions of wage workers, caused bankruptcy to farmers because prices of their produce crashed and disrupted the economic life of the whole country. The only people who benefited from the note bandi were companies that own digital payment systems (like PayTM, MobiKwik etc.) and credit card companies. It also seems now that ultimately, the black money owners have benefited because they managed to convert all their black wealth in to white using proxies.