英国将扩大银行的救助计划
U.K. to Expand Bank Rescue Plan2009年1月19日
The U.K. government is rushing out new additions to its financial rescue plan, in an effort to kick-start lending and quell rising concerns about the health of the country's banking system.
Faced with plunging bank stocks and a worsening economic downturn that the ￡500 billion rescue plan has failed to stem, the U.K. government now plans to offer banks a number of new measures, featuring a kind of insurance that would limit their losses on mortgage and other loans. The insurance would be aimed at easing worries about the extent of banks' losses and at reviving the market for securities into which banks repackage the loans.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Treasury Chief Alistair Darling plan to announce the package early Monday, after an intense weekend of negotiations. Urgency to finalize the package increased after a nerve-wracking late trading session on Friday that saw shares of Barclays PLC, considered one of the stronger U.K. banks, plummet 25% while Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC fell 13%.
The politicians will present the package to Parliament, where they are expected to face tough questions over why the existing bailout plan, announced in October, has failed to restore lending. That bailout included a ?37 billion capital injection into three of the country's biggest banks -- RBS, HBOS PLC, and Lloyds TSB Group PLC -- as well as government guarantees of bank debt. At the time, the package was seen as a global model for dealing with the financial crisis.
Under the new plan, the government will take steps to insure banks against losses arising from toxic assets currently on their balance sheets. Regulators and banks believe this is a better option than a so-called 'bad bank,' which would purchase toxic assets from the banks, because it avoids he tricky question of how to place a value on assets that have no market price.
Separately, the government will insure against losses on mortgage and other loans that are bundled into pools and sold as securities. The blueprint for this concept is a report by James Crosby, a former chief of HBOS, who in November recommended that the government guarantee some ?100 billion in such asset-backed securities over the next two years. One hope is that the guarantees will prompt institutional investors to buy the securities, restarting a frozen market that has been a crucial source of financing for bank lending.
The government also plans to extend its guarantee of bank-issued debt, initially scheduled to end in April, to the end of 2009, while also potentially expanding the guarantee to non-bank firms such as mortgage lenders and car-loan companies. In October, the government committed ?250 billion to that guarantee plan. By December, banks had issued some ?100 billion in debt using the guarantees.
The government will expand a lending scheme from the Bank of England, and allow financial institutions to swap a wider range of hard to sell assets for government debt. In addition, the government is considering easing the terms under which it took stakes in RBS, HBOS and Lloyds.
英国将扩大银行救助计划
英国政府正加紧为金融救助计划增加新内容，希望藉此启动放贷，并平息公众对英国银行系统健康状况的日益担忧。
尽管政府已经出台了5,000亿英镑（合7,400亿美元）的救助计划，但却没能遏止住银行类股的持续暴跌和经济下滑的不断恶化。在这种情况下，英国政府如今计划向银行提供若干新措施，主要包括可以限制银行按揭等贷款损失的类似保险的措施。这项保险措施旨在缓解公众对银行损失程度的担忧，并使债券市场复苏（银行将贷款打包成债券并在这类市场上出售）。
在上周末激烈的协商后，英国首相布朗和财政大臣阿利斯泰尔?达林计划将于周一早间宣布扩大后的救助计划。上周五尾盘，被视为英国最有实力的银行之一的巴克莱集团股价跌25%，苏格兰皇家银行集团跌13%，这种令人神经紧张的暴跌也增加了敲定救助计划的紧迫性。
政府官员将把救助计划提交给议会，预计届时他们会受到严厉的质询──去年10月宣布的救护计划为何没能恢复借贷。现有的计划包括向苏格兰皇家银行、HBOS PLC和莱斯银行这三家英国最大的银行注资370亿英镑，同时政府还会为银行债务提供担保。计划在宣布之初曾被认为是全球应对金融危机的典范。
根据新的计划，政府将采取措施，为银行资产负债表上现有问题资产的损失提供担保。监管机构和银行认为，这种做法比所谓的“坏银行”模式要好，因为这避免了一个棘手的问题──如何为没有市场价格的资产定价。“坏银行”就是收购银行的问题资产。
此外，政府还将为打包成证券的按揭等贷款的损失提供保险。这个想法来源于HBOS前首席执行长詹姆斯?克罗斯比的一份报告。去年11月克罗斯比曾建议，政府在未来的两年中为约1,000亿英镑的资产支持证券提供担保。政府希望藉此刺激机构投资者购买证券，重启银行借贷的重要融资来源、但如今已经冻结了的市场。
政府还计划延长对银行发行债券的担保，将结束时间从最初的4月份延长至年底，同时可能将担保扩大至抵押贷款放贷机构和汽车贷款公司等非银行机构。去年10月，政府承诺向这项担保计划提供2,500亿英镑。到12月之前，各银行已经发行了约1,000亿英镑使用了这项担保的债券。
政府将扩大央行的一项放贷计划，扩大金融机构用以换取政府债券的难以出售的资产范围。此外，政府正在考虑放宽政府在苏格兰皇家银行、HBOS和莱斯银行的持股条款。
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