UBS, the agencies, and other drama

A panoply of drama today.

First UBS. $14B. That's quite a lot. As Bloomberg reports:

The Zurich-based bank announced today a net loss of 12.5 billion Swiss francs ($11.4 billion) for the fourth quarter [...]

The bank increased markdowns directly linked to the subprime market to about $12 billion from the $10 billion it forecast in December and said an additional $2 billion of writedowns are for other U.S. residential mortgage securities.

This is in marked contrast to their prediction of a profit for Q4 made at the time of the Q3 writedown. Perhaps more significantly, as Naked Capitalism points out, this suggests more pain to come from the other players before this sorry farrago is over.

Next the bitter suspense of the bond insurers. Will they be downgraded today? Tomorrow? Sometime, never? The agencies are walking the line. If they wait for the man, Mr. Dinallo, they risk losing even more credibility. If they move too fast too soon they risk a shareholder lawsuit. (CNBC has some further insight here while the FT points out the size of the short interest in the monolines -- about 40% apparently.)

Meanwhile opinions continue to differ on how much the monolines need. Even the normally bullish WSJ says:

However, it quickly gets complicated, given that the banks themselves have differing levels of risk exposure to the bonds in question and also have differing abilities to provide cash. Calculating how much each should put up on a pro rata basis could be complicated and spark disagreement.

Moreover it is not just the banks' relative share that is in doubt, but also the size of the recapitalisation. The FT has estimates of between $10B (the monolines themselves) and $140B (Independent Strategy). You certainly don't want to low ball it and then have to go back to the market again so any plan that only puts in a couple of billion per firm has significant danger.

Update. John Thain is bullish here although he agrees that an industry wide bailout will be problematic. He said in an interview with the Financial Times on Wednesday that

He expected individual credit insurers would receive capital infusions from investors, but that it would be difficult to craft an “industry-wide” bail-out for the beleaguered guarantors.

Mr Thain said an effort by New York state regulators to help leading bond insurers maintain their credit ratings was raising interest in the sector on the part of investors including private equity groups and specialists in distressed companies.

However [...] getting banks to agree on a single approach was unlikely because they have different exposures to the credit insurers and varying opinions on what should be done.

Meanwhile Bloomberg reports:

MBIA Inc., the world's largest bond insurer, posted its biggest-ever quarterly loss and said it is considering new ways to raise capital after a slump in the value of subprime-mortgage securities the company guaranteed.

The fourth-quarter net loss was $2.3 billion, or $18.61 a share, raising concern the Armonk, New York-based company will lose its Aaa rating at Moody's Investors Service. The loss came a day after FGIC Corp.'s insurance unit became the third company to be stripped of its AAA credit rating.