Feature
S&P says Basel II helping to improve German banking
FRANKFURT – The proposed Basel II bank safety rules, weak operating performance and shareholder value considerations are behind a trend to more efficient capital allocation, prudent cost control and risk-adjusted pricing in German banking, a leading…
Bearing fruit
Introduction
Wanted: behavioural finance models
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All clear for energy
Several organisations have brought over-the-counter clearing to the US energy markets over the past six months. Kevin Foster assesses their progress and asks whether they can all survive
A long road to deregulation
Prospex Research’s Ben Tait reports on Spain and Portugal’s progress in integrating their power markets. High ambitions for deregulation are proving difficult to achieve
El Paso helps RiskMetrics adapt
RiskMetrics Group, a company more often associated with the financial sector, is implementing its risk solution software at energy firm El Paso Corp. How is it adapting the software to the specifics of the energy sector? Kevin Foster reports
Weighing up the options
The Brazilian energy market is set for more upheaval as the incoming president seeks a compromise between his campaign promises of greater state control over energy and the goal of attracting foreign investors into the sector. Maria Kielmas reports
A mark-to-market u-turn
A reversion to the old, non-mark-to-market regime for accounting for energy trading contracts is changing the energy supply business, reports Catherine Lacoursière
How much can you take?
Given recent events, energy firms need to fundamentally re-think how they estimate their risk tolerance. Maria Kielmas asks what has prompted this soul-searching
End of an era for GdF
Gaz de France is certain to lose its monopoly position – without it, what strategy can the gas giant adopt in a liberalised European market? Mickael Laurans reports
A safety net for energy traders
Will the Edison Electric Institute’s master netting agreement help reduce credit risk for energy traders? Kevin Foster takes a look at this new initiative
Loan portfolio value
Using a conditional independence framework, Oldrich Vasicek derives a useful limiting form for the portfolio loss distribution with a single systematic factor. He then derives a risk-neutral distribution suitable for traded portfolios, and shows how…
The power to survive
Energy trading technology
A moving target
Op risk systems
Twist and doubts
Trading standards
Knitting together bank risks
Enterprise-wide risk management
A reality at last
CLS Bank
Arrogance and aftershocks
Software consolidation
CLS Is Live. What Next?
CLS participants breathed a huge sigh of relief when the long-awaited system launched successfully. Is anyone ready to start expanding the system to new products?
STP Part 2: After Automation
A vice president of IT at Paine Webber predicts it won’t be enough to automate processes-they must be carefully coordinated.
Filling in the holes
Fixed-income banking