Who owns the Swiss National Bank?

A feature of pretty much any discussion about a central bank is that someone invariably pops up and claims that it is privately owned. This comes with the implication that dark forces are at work. Mostly it is simply not true but there are some cases which give food for thought and one of those is the case of the Swiss National Bank. You see it is possible to purchase a share in its equity capital and so far this morning some 14 shares have traded with the current price being 3965 Swiss Francs. If dark forces are at play this morning they have a lot of work to do as we look at the equity capital according to the

The share capital of the National Bank amounts to 25 million Swiss francs. It is divided into 100,000 registered shares with a nominal value of 250 Swiss francs each. The shares are fully paid up.

Also to have any real power you would either need to mislead the regulations or be part of a group as there is a limit to how many voting shares an individual can hold.

A shareholder’s registration is limited to a maximum of 100 shares. This limitation shall not apply to Swiss public-law corporations and institutions or to cantonal banks pursuant to Article 3a of the Federal Act of 8 November 1934¹ on Banks and Savings Banks.

Mind you as Swissinfo.ch pointed out a year ago not everyone is bothered by this.

The prime suspect is Theo Siegert, a German professor and business expert who sits on the boards of numerous companies. Siegert owned 6.6% of the share capital of the SNB at the end of last year, making him the second-largest shareholder behind the canton of Bern.

If we move to policy we see that we have a curious situation as of course investors are buying shares in what these days is a hedge fund which holds a lot of equities. This particular hedge fund has some 747 billion Swiss Francs in foreign currency investments of which around 20% is in equities.

Swissinfo.ch updated us a year ago on who owned the shares back then.

Cantons own 45% of stock, cantonal banks 15% and private investors (individuals or institutions) the remaining 40%.

What has happened?

The share price has given the impression that as Todd Terry would put it there is “something going on”. Here is the Wall Street Journal from the 21st of September.

Less than a month after its stock smashed through the 3,000-franc-a-share barrier, SNB shares hit an intraday high of 4,324 on Wednesday and were trading as high as 4,600 on Thursday. The stock has tripled in value from a year ago, repeatedly confounding market watchers by regularly hitting records.

So far this year, SNB shares are up about 160%, compared with an 11% gain for the SMI stock-market index of Swiss blue-chip companies. The broader Stoxx Europe 600 is up only 5.7% on the year.

If we look back the share price was in recent years mostly between 1000 and 1100 Swiss Francs so something has changed. The first wave was in August and September last year when the price rose to 1750 Swiss Francs and the next began towards the end of July when the 2000 Swiss Franc barrier was broken. As you can see progress was swift after that. Rather an irony to see a central bank share price surge like well “a boy in a bubble” isn’t it?

Backing

There is a dividend payment as shown below.

 

Subject to the Annual General Meeting’s approval of the proposed profit appropriation, a dividend not exceeding 6% of the share capital is to be paid from net profit (art. 31 para. 1 NBA). The dividend is CHF 15 (gross) and CHF 9.75 (net) per share, after deduction of withholding tax.

Interestingly the SNB itself feels that its shares should be traded like a bond.

Due to the legally stipulated maximum dividend of 6%, the price of the SNB share usually develops along similar lines to a long-term Confederation bond with a 6% coupon.

That gives us grounds for a surge in the price but leaves us with an awkward timing problem. The Swiss ten-year government bond yield went negative at the beginning of 2015 and it is currently 0%. So everybody was asleep at the wheel for quite some time.

The SNB as an equity investor

Here is @stocknewstimes and these tweets are from this morning.

Swiss National Bank boosted its stake in Bright Horizons Family Solutions Inc. (NYSE:BFAM) by 7.8% during the 2nd quarter………..SwissNationalBank Boosts Stake in Bright Horizons Family Solutions Inc. …….SwissNationalBank Boosts Holdings in The Madison Square Garden Company $MSG

You get the picture but how is this going? Well here is the Financial Times today.

Japan’s stock market hit a two-year high on Tuesday following fresh records set overnight in New York.

So equity investors are singing along with the band Chic.

Good times, these are the good times
Leave your cares behind, these are the good times
Good times, these are the good times
Our new state of mind, these are the good times

As a very large equity investor the SNB must be cheering from the sidelines and a weaker phase for the Swiss Franc only adds to the party. We do not know how holdings have performed but we are looking at a company with around 150 billion Swiss Francs of overseas equities at a time of all time highs for stock markets. Suddenly we have a potential rationale for buying shares in the Swiss National Bank.

Comment

Let us now move to the public side of the SNB where it sets interest-rates ( currently -0.75%) and monetary policy for Switzerland. This sits rather oddly with the private shareholders. They might be looking for a bond coupon as they are in short supply to say the least in modern-day Switzerland. Much more likely is that eyes are on the profits from the equity investments in particular. It is hard not to think of the phrase “socialisation of losses and privatisation of profits” at this point.

As to getting their hands on it the issue poses formal problems as profit distributions are for the public-sector. From Reuters.

For 2016 it paid 1.7 billion francs to the federal government and cantons. Remaining profit went into SNB reserves.

However according to Reuters some seem to think they have a chance of changing the rules.

A group of private shareholders proposed changing the bank’s rules to allow a higher payment, saying the bank’s foreign currency purchases had diluted the value of the Swiss franc.

“Our proposal aims to demonstrate the dilution of the purchasing power of the Swiss franc following the seven-fold increase in the SNB’s balance sheet since the financial crisis,” said shareholder Blaise Rossellat.

Has nobody told them that rule changes are only for central banks themselves? Or rather the rules get “interpreted” along the lines so memorably described in Yes Prime Minister “they didn’t seem quite appropriate.”

So we have two routes here I think which can be interrelated. Someone may have “high- ticked” the shares to get a reaction. This would most logically be done by an existing investor but may have been someone who was simply bored. The next is that some think they have a solid chance of changing the rules and actually benefitting from the gains of the SNB. Of course they are at this stage almost entirely paper profits but that does not bother people in so many other areas. This simultaneously has everything and nothing to do with monetary policy as we mull yet another series of unintended consequences. The investors must be hoping that the words of Tom Petty do not turn out to be appropriate.

I’m learning to fly, around the clouds
But what goes up must come down.

RIP Tom and thank you for the music.