If you want a barometer to gauge storminess in financial sector sentiment, you could do worse than look at one of the most prosaic of funding mechanisms for the global economy: a centuries-old trade finance product called a banker’s acceptance.
Comparable with other devices used to grease the wheels of trade — supply chain finance, factoring, invoice finance, letters of credit — banker’s acceptances are designed to be as safe as they are dull. They are collateralised, short-term payment promises guaranteed by a bank and rendered liquid by being tradeable on an exchange. A stable, predictable market should be a given.
But as Lex Greensill showed, even a mundane financial product can be turbocharged into something that bears little resemblance to the original concept, hides risk off-balance-sheet and causes billions of dollars of losses to investors who don’t pay attention. Just ask Credit Suisse, now embroiled in a web of legal claims from clients which had funds invested in Greensill’s “innovative” take on supply chain finance.