基金公司的风险被夸大 Protect asset managers from the armchair doom mongers

Do asset managers pose a growing systemic risk to the economy? This month the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Basel committee on banking supervision joined a growing list of regulators who think so.

资产管理公司对经济构成日益严重的系统性风险了吗？越来越多监管机构认为答案是肯定的，日前，澳大利亚央行(Reserve Bank of Australia)与巴塞尔银行监管委员会(Basel committee on banking supervision)也加入了它们的行列。

Among the scenarios the authorities worry about is a bank-style run in which investors, fearful that redemptions by others will cause the value of their funds to fall, rush to pull their money out ahead of the crowd. That, the argument goes, would damage those on the other side of the trade, and cause large price swings in financial markets.

各监管机构担心的情形之一，是一种类似银行挤兑的基金赎回潮：投资者因担心其他人的赎回行为会导致他们的基金价值下跌，而争相抢在别人前头抽离资金。他们认为，这将对这一行对接的另一方造成损害，并导致金融市场出现巨幅价格波动。

The Financial Stability Board, set up by the Group of 20 leading nations to help oversee the financial system, is among the international bodies to propose labelling the largest asset managers global systemically important financial institutions, which would lumber them with stringent regulations and capital requirements hitherto visited only on the biggest insurers and banks.

由20国集团(G20)设立、旨在帮助监督金融体系的金融稳定委员会(Financial Stability Board)以及其他一些国际机构，都建议将那些最大型资产管理公司定义为具有全球系统重要性的金融机构，这样就可以让迄今只适用于大型保险公司和银行的严格监管规定及资本金要求也适用于这些资产管理公司。

But the risks are overstated. True, mutual funds own a hefty 20-30 per cent of corporate bonds traded on global markets, and investors can pull out at short notice. It would be hard to find buyers for a big portion all at once. But the likelihood of a fire sale is lower than armchair thinkers seem to believe.

但这种风险被夸大了。不错，全球市场上交易的公司债有高达20%至30%为共同基金所有，而且投资者只需提前很短时间通知就能赎回资金。很难马上为一大部分债券找到买家。但低价甩卖的可能性并不像纸上谈兵的理论家看上去认为的那么高。

Mutual funds investors have never been especially flighty, even in times of market stress. Our recent studywith the Oliver Wyman consultancy shows that bond mutual funds experienced outflows of just 5 per cent after the 1994 bond rout — which was the worst period for redemptions in the past 35 years.

共同基金投资者从未特别积极地逃跑，即便在市场承压之际。我们最近与奥纬咨询(Oliver Wyman)共同做的一项研究表明，哪怕是在1994年债券崩盘（过去35年来赎回最严重的时期）之后，债券型共同基金也仅经历了5%的资金流出。

Things were no worse after 1987, the Asian crisis, the technology meltdown at the turn of the millennium, or even in the most recent crisis. Since bond mutual funds in Europe and the US on average have cash holdings of between 4 and 7 per cent of total assets, the likelihood of unmanageable outflows seems slim. The industry, it seems, is already managing the risk of a dislocation that is within the range of historical precedent.

1997年亚洲金融危机、世纪之交互联网泡沫破灭，甚至最近这次金融危机之后，都未出现更严重的赎回。因为欧洲和美国的债券型共同基金通常的现金持有量可达总资产的4%至7%，出现难以控制的资金外流的可能性似乎微乎其微。看上去，这一行业已经将历史先例范围内的错配风险纳入管理。

Still, there is no doubt that quantitative easing and financial reform have shifted liquidity risk from banks to investors, and regulators might wish to do more than simply take comfort in the past 35 years worth of benign experience. Here, then, is a better idea: instead of applying restrictive rules that will indiscriminately inflict pain on mutual funds without doing much to make the financial system less fragile, regulators should use stress tests of the largest funds to calibrate their response.

不过，毫无疑问，量化宽松政策与金融改革已经将流动性风险从银行转移到了投资者身上，而监管机构可能希望能采取更多措施，而非仅仅从过去35年“和风细雨”的经历中得到安慰。因此，这里有一个更好的建议：与其实施那些不加区别地对所有共同基金造成痛苦而又对改善金融体系脆弱性作用不大的限制性规定，监管机构更应该利用压力测试，来检验大型基金的应对能力。

Predictive models could help quantify the risk, taking into account the differences between investors. Mutual funds held in retirement savings plans have been far stickier than other investors, and yet some regulators have assumed the opposite.

预测模型可以帮助量化风险，将投资者之间的区别考虑进去。退休储蓄计划持有的共同基金远比其他投资者更具粘性，这与一些监管机构一直以来的看法相反。

Bouts of illiquidity are inevitable, so funds and regulators should prepare for them. How, for example, should the cost of meeting redemption requests be allocated between investors? Under what circumstances should it be permissible to bar redemptions? Such questions are best considered before a crisis, when answers will be needed urgently.

暂时的流动性不足是不可避免的，因此，基金公司和监管机构都应对此有所准备。例如，满足赎回申请的成本应该如何在投资者之间如何分配？在什么情况下应允许基金公司暂停赎回？最好在危机发生前考虑这些问题，因为一旦危机发生，我们将迫切需要答案。

In contrast, labelling the largest fund managers “systemic” does not seem to capture many of the risks policy makers fear. The International Monetary Fund, for example, says it is worried about the disruption that asset managers might wreak in emerging markets. Yet only one of the 10 largest emerging market debt mutual fund managers would be captured by the proposed rules.

相比之下，给大型基金管理公司贴上“系统性”标签，似乎并不能捕获政策制定者担心的许多风险。例如，国际货币基金组织(IMF)表示，它对资产管理公司可能在新兴市场造成的破坏感到担忧。但在10家最大的新兴市场债券型共同基金管理公司中，只有一家将受到拟议规定的限制。

Market structure reforms could also help. Moving more business on to central clearing houses could reduce channels of contagion — so long as the clearing houses are resilient. The benefits of electronic trading networks, which normally seize up in panics, are overstated.

市场结构改革也可以有所帮助。将更多业务转移到中央清算机构可以减少蔓延的渠道——只要清算机构抵御力够强。电子交易网络的好处被夸大了，这种网络在恐慌时期通常会失灵。

The corporate bond market and mutual funds were a source of enormous strength throughout the crisis to fund companies. We should tread carefully. Stress testing is probably the best place to start.

在整个危机期间，公司债市场和共同基金一直是基金公司的巨大力量来源。我们应该谨慎行事。从压力测试做起很可能是最好的方案。