The effects of two-way lending between financial conglomerates in bilateral repo markets
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The series Borradores de Economía (Working Papers on Economics) contributes to the dissemination and promotion of the work by researchers from the institution. On multiple occasions, these works have been the result of collaborative work with individuals from other national or international institutions. This series is indexed at Research Papers in Economics (RePEc). The opinions contained in this document are the sole responsibility of the author and do not commit Banco de la República or its Board of Directors.
Abstract
We examine how market structure, market power, and systemic risk respond to close and intense lending relationships between financial conglomerates (FCs) in non-centrally cleared bilateral repo. Using transaction-level data from Mexico, we document persistent and stable funding relationships between FC-affiliated banks and funds with two distinctive features: first, funding transactions are two-way, that is, a given pair of rival FCs provide lending to one another on the same day; second, two-way transactions are executed at lower average rates than one-way transactions. We show that two-way lending between FCs favours both market concentration and market power of FC-affiliated funds, and worsens the terms of trade of independent banks’ and funds’ lending. Furthermore, we find that the bank-level contribution to systemic risk increases with two-way lending.
26TH OF MARCH, 2024 - 
