Securities lending
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In finance, securities lending or "stock lending" refers to the lending of securities by one party to another. The terms of the loan will be governed by a "Securities Lending Agreement", which, under U.S. law, require that the borrower provide the lender with collateral, in the form of cash, government securities, or a Letter of Credit of value equal to or greater than the loaned securities. As payment for the loan, the parties negotiate a fee, quoted as an annualized percentage of the value of the loaned securities. If the agreed form of collateral is cash, then the fee may be quoted as a "rebate", meaning that the lender will earn all of the interest which accrues on the cash collateral, and will "rebate" an agreed rate of interest to the borrower.
Securities Lending is legal and clearly regulated in most of the world's major securities markets. Most markets mandate that the borrowing of securities be conducted only for specifically permitted purposes, which generally include (1) to facilitate settlement of a trade, (2) to facilitate delivery of a short sale, (3) to finance the security, and (4) to facilitate a loan to another borrower who is motivated by one of these permitted purposes.
When a security is loaned, the title of the security transfers to the borrower. This means that the borrower has the advantages of holding the security, just as though they owned it. Specifically, the borrower will receive all coupon and/or dividend payments, and any other rights such as voting rights. In most cases, these dividends or coupons must be passed back to the lender in the form of what is referred to as a "manufactured dividend".
The initial driver for the securities lending business was to cover settlement failure. If one party fails to deliver stock to you it can mean that you are unable to deliver stock that you have already sold to another party. In order to avoid the costs and penalties that can arise from settlement failure, stock could be borrowed at a fee, and delivered to the second party. When your initial stock finally arrived (or was obtained from another source) lender would receive back the same number of shares in the security they lent.
Securities lending has since evolved from an operational back office task to a profit generating activity. The principle reason for borrowing securities is to be able to sell a security short. This means selling something that you do not own. As you are obliged to deliver the security, you will have to borrow it. At the end of the agreement you will have to return an equivalent security to the lender. Equivalent in this context means fungible, i.e. the securities have to be completely interchangeable. Compare this with lending a ten euro note. You do not expect exactly the same note back, as any ten euro note will do. This type of "Naked" short is now just one of many financial structures that involve the borrowing of stock.
Securities lenders, often simply called sec lenders are holders of securities. This can be asset managers, who have many securities under management, or custodian banks, who hold securities for third parties. The international trade organization for the securities lending industry is the International Securities Lending Association ISLA. According to a June 2004 survey, their members had euro 5.99 billion worth of securities available for lending. In the US, the Risk Management Association publishes quarterly surveys among its (US based) members. In June 2005, these had USD 5.77 billion worth of securities available. Large security lenders are:
- State Street Corporation (Boston)
- JP Morgan Chase (New York)
- Citibank (New York)
- Mellon Bank (Pittsburgh)
- Bank of New York (New York)
- The Northern Trust Company (Chicago)
- Robeco (Rotterdam, the Netherlands)
- UBS (Zürich, Switzerland)
Typical borrowers include Hedge Funds and the propriety trading desks of investment banks.
[edit] The term as used in investment banking
In investment banking, the term "securities lending" is also used to describe a service offered to large investors who can allow the investment bank to lend out their shares to other people. This is often done to investors of all sizes who have pledged their shares to borrow money to buy more shares, but large investors like pension funds often choose to do this to their unpledged shares because they will receive interest income. In these types of agreements, the investor still receives any dividends as normal, the only thing they can't generally do is to vote their shares.
