Friday, May 13, 2011

SocGen: Why Greece Ain’t Lehman

Wall Street Journal
May 13, 2011

A couple succinct bullet points on the fallout from still-ongoing Greek crisis won't be anywhere near what we saw in the wake of Lehman’s bankruptcy. From Societe Generale interest rates watchers Fidelio Tata and Patrick Gouraud:

The Lehman bankruptcy was a widely unanticipated event, while the Greece crisis has been on the radar screen of risk managers at least since April 2010 (when the Greek government requested the EU/IMF bailout package). This gave financial institutions ample time to reduce or to hedge exposure.


Lehman created systemic risk within the financial markets precisely because the vast majority of financial institutions had direct business relationships with Lehman (including derivative exposure, collateral agreements and hedges). On the other hand, the exposure of banks to Greece is estimated to be less than 5% of the total exposure of all market participants to Greece.

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