YES Bank rescue plan: How brokerages have interpreted the proposals

Macquarie has suggested that taxpayers will the biggest casualty in the government-approved bailout plan for YES Bank

State Bank of India (SBI) chairman Rajnish Kumar on Saturday sought to allay concerns regarding the proposed rescue plan for YES Bank, which involves the state-owned bank picking up a 49 per cent stake in the latter, subject to conditions. The proposed plan saw stocks of YES Bank and SBI take a hit in trade on Friday, with leading brokerages such as Macquarie suggesting taxpayers will the biggest casualty in the government-approved bailout plan. JP Morgan, on the other hand, has revised down the target price of YES Bank stock to Rs 1.

Here’s how leading brokerages have interpreted the proposals and its likely impact on YES Bank, SBI and the baking sector.

Macquarie: The fact that government is considering such a bail out proposal clearly shows the risk inherent in investing in PSU banks/companies who continue to be subjected to the vagaries and compulsions of the government. The bigger casualty is taxpayers as their money is being used to infuse capital in PSU banks time and again. In other words, it is the taxpayers who are bailing out YES Bank indirectly in our view.

One buys a bank for its liabilities franchise and not for its assets. We are unsure of YES Bank’s quality of liabilities franchise, which perhaps could have further got affected due to the current solvency issues. Consolidation would have brought about a lot of integration challenges as well as legal challenges as we believe SBI Act needs to be amended for SBI to acquire a private sector bank. Even in this case, the deal will require blessings of the regulator as well as the Government. READ MORE HERE

JP Morgan: The quasi sovereign bailout (by SBI/LIC) is in fact bond holder / depositor – led bailout and not an equity one. In sum, we think the bank will need to be recapitalised at nominal equity value and could test dilution of AT1s. We remain underweight and cut our target price to Rs 1 as we believe net worth is largely impaired…