The nation’s structured credit market, which experienced a freeze in securitization activities last year, will continue to suffer from excess liquidity and low interest rates for the next two years, analysts at Fitch Ratings said yesterday.
“From a bank originator’s perspective, given that there is excess liquidity within the financial system, together with stagnant loan growth and low corporate impairment losses, there have been limited incentives for local banks to securitize their existing credit books,” April Chen (陳怡潔), associate director of the rating agency’s structured credit business, told a media briefing yesterday.
The market segment peaked at a volume of NT$230 billion (US$7.2 billion) in 2006 before dramatically declining to zero issuance activity last year, the agency said.
On the demand side, some local fixed-income investors, mainly insurance companies, retained their appetite for domestic corporate structured credit paper. This, however, was limited to very senior tranches with simple structures, she said.
Meanwhile, the nation’s real estate asset trusts (REATs) and real estate investment trusts (REITs) will maintain an outlook rating between “stable” and “negative”, pending their underlying properties, although their asset performance may lag behind the economic recovery, analyst Henry Hung (洪碩亨) told the same briefing.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
The New Taiwan dollar and Taiwanese stocks surged on signs that trade tensions between the world’s top two economies might start easing and as US tech earnings boosted the outlook of the nation’s semiconductor exports. The NT dollar strengthened as much as 3.8 percent versus the US dollar to 30.815, the biggest intraday gain since January 2011, closing at NT$31.064. The benchmark TAIEX jumped 2.73 percent to outperform the region’s equity gauges. Outlook for global trade improved after China said it is assessing possible trade talks with the US, providing a boost for the nation’s currency and shares. As the NT dollar
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
RSS