In the wake of the widespread chaos that accompanied the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers last September, regulators have sought to find a better way to unwind global financial giants. One approach is that the banks themselves should prepare for their own orderly demise -- a kind of "living will".

That idea has been gathering steam of late. The G20 group of finance ministers and central bankers meeting in London over the weekend agreed to require "systemic firms to develop firm-specific contingency plans."

The concept has wide appeal. The crisis has convinced politicians and regulators of all colours that even large financial institutions must be allowed to fail without imposing a huge burden on taxpayers. Many bankers see such a regime as a preferable alternative to more intrusive regulation.

However, drawing up a detailed "living will" is easier said than done.

Simon Gleeson of Clifford Chance argues that it is more important for regulators and legislators to establish a cross-border crisis-management and resolution regime than it is for individual firms to prepare for their own demise.

The mandate of the Financial Stability Board (FSB), the international body comprising finance ministries, central banks and financial regulators, was recently expanded to include contingency planning for cross-border crises. It published a series of relevant principles in April. However, as the Institute of International Finance (IIF) noted, it is "clear from the high-level nature of the principles and the aspirational language [that] there remains a lot to be done."

The IIF is calling for the FSB to develop a convention on crisis management that would include detailed rules, including on early intervention. It also wants the FSB to run cross-border crisis simulations of the sort routinely carried out by domestic regulators.

But crisis-handling is only half the battle. Once a bank collapses, national priorities currently kick into action, not least because the responsibility for a bail-out rests with elected finance ministers rather than the technocrats who run financial regulators or central banks.

Politicians' instincts will always be to minimise the harm to their own depositors, creditors and banking systems, regardless of the global cost.

Solvency law reinforces these nationalistic instincts. Like financial markets law, it is bounded by national borders. Administrators allocate the bank's remaining assets among local creditors, regardless of the claims of creditors overseas. Indeed, they are often prohibited from cooperating with their foreign counterparts, even if they wanted to.

Solvency law is also wholly inadequate to the task of unwinding huge, interconnected financial firms.

One solution, as floated by Adair Turner, chairman of Britain's Financial Services Authority, would be to require international banks to simplify their corporate structures. But this is likely to be resisted by the banks as it would eradicate all the efficiency benefits of a cross-border structure, as well as exposing tax-minimising schemes.

Instead, the IIF advocates that governments agree criteria for burden-sharing ahead of another crisis. A common fund could be established across borders, though the IIF sensibly recognises that the political challenges would be huge.

More pertinently, the IIF advocates that banks should be subject to a special resolution regime separate from those of regular commercial companies. Central to such a regime would be a cross-border agreement that governments could step in and override normal insolvency practices in order to avoid systemic disruption of the banking and payments systems.

Some of the issues posed by the financial crisis are intellectually difficult; some politically challenging. Devising a legal framework for "living wills" manages to be both. Any solution for dealing with a future Lehman remains a long way off.

The Year Since Lehman -- related columns:

Banking? Keep it simple, stupid

A year on, it's still a housing story

- David Andrews is director of David Andrews Media, a financial public relations consultancy with high profile fund management and financial services clients based in the UK, Ireland, Cayman Islands, Cape Verde, Beijing, Europe and the U.S. The opinions expressed are his own. -

David is a former financial journalist best known for his weekly Daily Express and Conde Nast ‘Money Matters’ columns.
Few will be lifting a glass to toast the first anniversary of the collapse of investment bank Lehman Brothers a year ago this week. With billions of dollars under management and thought to be invincible, the private bank was generally regarded as a potential gateway to the riches of Croessus for the ordained Masters of the Universe who prowled its Jackson Pollock-lined corridors.

But when the bank started to drown in the treacherous quagmire of its collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) - a type of structured asset-backed security whose value and payments are derived from a portfolio of fixed-income underlying assets – America’s Federal Reserve elected not to send in the cavalry.

The virtual overnight collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 was the catalyst which brought the world economy to its knees with breathtaking rapidity. The bank was so huge, a massive juggernaut reversing and elbowing its way in so many different markets that when the U.S. government allowed it to go to the wall, it caused a convulsion among its many counter-parties, which in turn caused global credit markets to seize up. "Normal" banking activity virtually ground to a halt.

We were all in dreadful trouble.

Some commentators, notably Warren Buffett and the International Monetary Fund’s former chief economist Raghuram Rajan, sounded many alarms bells about the runaway train that was the growing appetite for CDOs and other highly complex, derivatives-based tools which delivered fabulous wealth to a few but subliminally spread a cancerous, critical risk throughout the global credit system and effectively precipitated the crunch that led to a near collapse in the UK and U.S. banking systems and onto worldwide recession.

The chill winds of destabilisation were already whipping through the U.S. economy however well in advance of the Lehman collapse, as pigeons came home to roost in the wake of the extraordinary saga of so-called sub-prime mortgage misselling in the States.

As more and more people defaulted on their home loans – typically because their interest rate shot up after an initial honeymoon period, securities backed with subprime mortgages, widely held by financial firms, lost most of their value. The result was a precipitous collapse in the capital of many banks and the tightening credit around the world which signalled the beginning of the recession which has plagued us for the best part of the last 12 months.

Back in early 2007, as the rumblings of problems in the U.S. property market were beginning to be felt, I wrote (for a financial publication) "let’s just hope that the credit squeeze in the States which has caused so many problems for world markets is not contagious. Banks over here need to take note. Lending lots of money to poor people who have no hope of being able to repay at inflated rates further down the line is not good economic sense. It is sheer, short term greed, short sighted and likely to sink the lot of us if it continues."

Looking back at that sentiment now, it is clear that the "banks over here" did not take note. They very nearly took us all down with them.

It has been a long, long year….but we do, finally, appear to be emerging – albeit tentatively – blinking into a new post recessionary dawn.

While unemployment is still a major concern, both domestically and in the U.S., where it has climbed to around 9 per cent, markets are starting to recover and as I write the FTSE 100 index of blue-chip companies has rallied more than 40 percent since slumping to its low for the year in early March.

The move to 5,000 - a level last touched on October 3 - comes as a new survey from Nationwide Building Society showed that British consumers are feeling more confident than at any point in the past 12 months.

So, consumer confidence up, spending up, export sales up, property sales rising, more mortgage business being written….things are looking promising.

In an upbeat speech the other week, the cautious, invariably dour U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's reckoned that economic activity in the U.S. and around the world appeared to be "leveling out" and that "the prospects for a return to growth in the near term appear good".

Let’s hope he is right.

But – and as a natural pessimist I would say this - who knows what is around the corner?  Didn’t that wily old sage Mr Greenspan say just the other day that we will reel once again from a global downturn at some point in the future, as it is part of the cyclical nature of advanced capitalism?

As another American who once ducked and dived on the world stage, Donald Rumsfield, might have put it, "as we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know…"

You get my drift.

– Agnes T. Crane is a Reuters columnist. The views expressed are her own –

Sometimes a failed lender is just a failed lender.

The relatively small size of CIT Group is a big reason the middle-market lender is headed to the wood chopper as soon as Friday. But the lender’s decision to move aggressively into the world of risky lending and not regroup when troubles in the credit markets first emerged is a classic case of bad decision-making and bad timing striking the mortal blow.

Indeed, one should resist the temptation to draw broader conclusions from a CIT bankruptcy in a world where the government is saving some banks and leaving others to languish.

CIT is no stranger to skirting the edge of trouble. In 2002, it had a near-death experience when problems at its scandal-plagued parent Tyco International cost it access to essential short-term financing. Tapping a credit line averted disaster then.

That lesson seemed to have been lost on Jeffrey Peek, a former Wall Street investment banker. He joined the company just a year later, becoming CEO in 2004. Peek then led the once-under-the-radar lender into the world of subprime loans, student lending and leveraged buyouts at a time when such ventures were hailed as the Promised Land for companies and executives with big ambitions.

But like others on Wall Street, he funded his aspirations through credit markets and by 2007 they had grown tired of such risky ventures and promptly shut off the financing spigot. The drought threw Countrywide Financial, the lender that fed the nation’s housing addiction with questionable loans, into the arms of Bank of America — a clear warning sign to those that relied on debt markets to start shoring up their capital with other sources of funding.

“Management should have addressed their funding problems two years ago,” said Sean Egan, president of Egan-Jones Ratings Co.

For CIT, the death blow came in March 2008 — six months before the financial firm bloodbath that spooked Congress into handing over more than $700 billion to save the financial system. Credit ratings downgrades left the company little choice but to draw on a credit facility — a sure signal of weakness from which it never recovered.

In December, the government still chose to give it a $2.33 billion infusion of TARP funds after the company converted itself into a bank holding company.

In hindsight, it’s a wonder that the government gave the lender funds in the first place, but then again it was handing out lots of funds at a time when it thought broad brush-strokes were needed to stabilize the financial system.

Times have changed and it looks like CIT’s time is up. Financial markets are stable, and earnings from JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs Group this week show that the big banks are now far from failing.

The government’s refusal to give it a second shot in the arm this week isn’t surprising given the rapid deterioration of its collateral.

That CIT is expected to leave only small ripples rather than a Lehman Brothers tsunami makes a bankruptcy less ominous and easier for the government to draw the line.

But for those angry about CIT’s demise, keep your wrath focused on the company and its excessive risk-taking. It helped create a credit crunch that’s about to get worse for the little guy.

- Professor David Bailey works at the Coventry University Business School and has written extensively on globalisation, economic restructuring and industrial policy, with particular reference to the auto industry. The opinions expressed are his own. -

GM declared itself bankrupt on Monday in one of the largest bankruptcies in U.S. history, in an attempt to seek protection from creditors.

The firm has stacked up over $80 billion of losses in the last four years, also swallowing some $20 billion in cash from the Obama administration. It is likely to need another $30 billion before emerging from Chapter 11 substantially slimmed down and free of debts.

A bankruptcy judge will decide who gets what assets. It's not clear whether during Chapter 11 the firm will continue to function and assemble cars.

It used to be said that "whatever's good for GM is good for the U.S. economy". Whilst GM is no longer the world's biggest carmaker, by some estimates it still accounts for 1 percent of the U.S. economy. The bankruptcy is not only hugely symbolic of the fate of the ailing U.S. car industry, but is of huge importance for all the workers, suppliers, dealers and creditors caught up in its travails.

Republicans have begun to criticise the U.S. president's handling of the GM affair, but it is difficult to see what else the U.S. president could have done.

Obama had to give GM time to come up with a credible plan, and I have always thought that the firm would need up to $50 billion of government support to get through the downturn and restructuring.

Under the proposed plan, the U.S. government would get a stake of over 70 percent in GM in return for another $30 billion of state cash, with the United Auto Workers union taking 17.5 percent initially, with the union accepting shares in GM instead of cash owed by the firm for retired employees healthcare cover.

A majority of GM's bondholders have accepted the offer to swap their $27 billion in debt for an initial stake of 10 percent with the option of buying 15 percent more later. Their agreement to do this should help in speeding GM's progress through Chapter 11 and avoid expensive legal battles.

Whilst a minority group of bondholders are holding out for a better deal, in reality this restructuring is the only game in town.

Hopefully, the new GM that emerges from Chapter 11 will be leaner, fitter and free of debts. It will include the firm's best models and R&D and will scrap brands like Pontiac, Hummer and Saturn.

By 2012, the new GM will comprise the Chevrolet, Cadillac and Buick brands, plus its GMC truck brand. Of particular importance, its forthcoming electric Chevvy Volt car will be part of the new firm.

"GM-Lite" will cut the number of assembly sites across North America, including Canada, to 33 within three years, from 47 at the end of last year.

Eventually, the goal is to float the new firm on the New York Stock Exchange. It will shed some 20,000 or more workers in the U.S., and has also told over a thousand dealers in the U.S. that they are at risk of losing their franchise. GM plans to lose 2,300 from its 6,000-strong network.

In a deal with the UAW which saves the firm $1 billion a year, rules on breaks, vacation and overtime have been changed, retiree benefits have been cut, and the UAW has agreed not to strike until September 2015 at the earliest.

GM will never be the biggest manufacturer again, but Chapter 11 is anyway about restructuring the firm, erasing the debts, cutting costs and reorienting the firm towards more environmentally friendly cars.

A viable car company may yet emerge from the ashes of the old GM, thanks to an interventionist U.S. government which is investing heavily in new green technologies.

The situation here in the UK is rather different. An efficient and world class car industry is struggling given the impact of recession and credit crunch, and the British government has largely been a spectator as GM Europe has been sold off.

That in turn could have a very significant impact on jobs at Vauxhall here in the UK.