Great debacles of our time: The great mezzanine financing collapse (part 1)

I haven't really blogged much about this, but the dominoes are really starting to roll within mezzanine finance in Australia. After Westpoint went down, we've now seen Fincorp and Australian Capital Reserve (ACR) hit the deck as well.

The fact that this is even major news speaks volumes about 2 things:

1. Where financial advisers stand to gain significant commissions from the sale of such products, can there be any more evidence that commission-based advice is completely wrong?

2. Where such risky products are offered, should this ring alarm bells on the general level of investor financial literacy if investors go into these with all guns blazing?

First of all, what do we mean by mezzanine financing?

Basically, in all these instances, the company that was the end user was building property developments. Sound OK, so far?

In order to undertake this level of development, money needs to be borrowed, usually from banks, to fund purchase and/or construction.

However, this will only go part way. You know how banks will generally lend up to 80% of a property's value? And possibly a bit more if the bank (which the borrower pays for, natch) buys Lender's Mortgage Insurance?

Well, more money will quite often be required for property development.

This is where mezzanine financing comes in.

Mezzanine finance is usually sourced from the issuance of certain financial instruments, usually debentures and unsecured notes. This promises the investor a fixed rate of interest for a fixed term, and at the end, the borrower pays back the principle, together with any interest that is owed.

Debentures are usually secured through a trust deed over the company. Unsecured notes are, as the name would suggest, not secured.

But the security provided for debentures is not normally worth the paper it's written on, unless the security provided are specific assets. If it is only security over the company itself, then debenture-holders will rank behind secured creditors if the borrower is wound up.

In the case of Westpoint, Fincorp and ACR, the "secured creditors" are the banks who have lent to these companies and have first mortgage claims over specific assets. So all is good for them, provided that employees are paid, the taxman gets his cut and the administrators/liquidators get paid, though not necessarily in that order.

Unsecured notes will then normally rank behind debentures. Shareholders will be last, in the unlikely event that there is anything left over after the banks have mopped up.

The main problems, though, with these were in the points raised above. Let's look at them one by one:

1. Financial adviser commissions

I've heard, but I can't pin it down, that in the case of Westpoint, commissions paid to advisers were as high as 10%. This means that for a $10,000 investment, a financial adviser would be collecting a commission of up to $1,000 up front, not allowing for cuts that his dealer group may keep. Not only that, but the commission was paid for by Westpoint themselves, it wasn't recouped from the investor through an "entry fee" arrangement.

Now in all my years of providing advice, it was rare that any product would provide anything up front of more than 4%. And even then, this would normally be recouped via an entry fee, so that the investor essentially paid the fee.

Ostensibly, this means that Westpoint were paying a 10% commission to advisers on top of the interest rate applicable to the notes that they had written. That's some seriously expensive borrowings.

The interest rates were quite high, too. But I'll come to this later.

I can't find any evidence to suggest that Fincorp and ACR were being invested in via financial advisers, so I'll have to assume that his problem was specific to Westpoint.

2. Mezzanine finance and portfolio theory

From what I can tell, advisers appeared to be completely ignorant about the nature of these investments.

Debentures and unsecured notes are medium to long-term instruments that promise a rate of interest paid in regular instalments, together with a return of capital at the end.

This means that they are fixed interest investments, just like bonds and term deposits.

Because the funds were used for what was ostensibly property investments, advisers were not only recommending these to people as part of their fixed interest portfolio, but also as part of their property portfolios.

This is erroneous in the extreme.

Not only that, but it appears that advisers were, in some instances, recommending that investors stick all this part of their portfolio into the one instrument.

Portfolio theory tells us that this is a silly thing to do. For most investors - my guess 90-95% - portfolio theory tells us that diversification achieves a greater return for a given level of risk.

Usually, the risk that is managed through diversification is market risk, however there are other risks out there, two of them being credit risk and interest rate risk. Diversification provides an effective way of managing both of these risks, by "not putting all one's eggs in the one basket".

But if you're going to stick an entire segment of your portfolio in the one asset - your diversification is reduced. And because of this, your exposure to something going wrong is greatly increased.

It's fair to suggest, and studies back up this suggestion, that advisers were really only thinking about their commissions when recommending this sort of product.

Again, I can find no evidence to suggest that Fincorp and ACR's ones were being sold through financial advisers, so this problem appears to be Westpoint-specific.

However, my point about diversification applies to all investors who used this sort of product still stands, and I'll discuss this some more in due course.

3. Financial literacy and retirees

In the case of ACR, I remember seeing advertisements on TV last year where interest rates of up to 9.15% were being offered. I remember at the time breathing a snort of disbelief and thinking to myself, "Surely that can't be sustainable."

And obviously, it wasn't.

However, as I've mentioned before at various spots throughout my blog, the general level of financial literacy throughout the Australian public is not particularly good.

The first thing that anyone should learn before they invest a cent is this old maxim:

"If it looks too good to be true, that's normally because it is."

Anyway, the advertising that ACR was doing was calculated to ensnare retirees. I'm told that Fincorp and Westpoint were doing this too, at various times, but retirees are an interesting demographic.

Why?

A. They're usually cashed up. They've retired from the workforce, and they often have a significant chunk of money to play around with, either in the form of superannuation, or equity in their homes.

B. It would appear that retirees are not particularly financially savvy compared to later generations. This blogger would contend that later generations aren't all that better, but I'll leave that post for another day.

C. Retirees generally like investments that pay regular income.

So it would appear to be a no-brainer - when presented by advertisements showing excellent rates, why wouldn't retirees go in for this hell for leather?

In my book, aiming one's advertising at retirees is only slightly better than how the music industry, alcohol and tobacco companies target their advertising at kiddies.

This doesn't make it any less vile.

I'm going to call a halt here - there's plenty more that I'd like to write, but it needs a second part. Stay tuned.

Standard but necessary disclaimer: This is not advice. Only a complete idiot would think that any of this constituted advice. It's not even vaguely reasonable to consider this to be advice. If you are in any doubt as to the content of this, see a good, independent financial adviser immediately. They do exist.