Page 270 - Invited Paper Session (IPS) - Volume 1

IPS152 Giovanna B. et al.
the name, country and economic sector of the sponsor (the entity on whose
behalf an SPE was established), the originator (the entity or entities that
originally issued the SPE loans/assets) and the ultimate parent if the SPE is
consolidated on an accounting basis. Noted interest, bankruptcy remoteness
and orphan structure characteristics are also reported.
Total assets in the SPE sector amounted to €727 billion in Q4 2018. Within
this, securitisation SPEs account for €447 billion in assets within 1,132 SPEs and
non-securitisation SPEs, €281 billion of assets within 1,181 SPEs. Over half of
all non-securitisation SPEs are consolidated into other entities compared to
around one quarter of securitisation SPEs. Within both categories, most
consolidation takes place into foreign entities while most SPEs are also
sponsored by foreign entities. However, there is not complete alignment
between both concepts, i.e. SPEs can be consolidated into a domestic entity
but sponsored by a foreign entity and, less commonly, vice-versa. We also find
that our SPE population reports fees and commissions payable for
professional services but observe no evidence of employees and this view is
supported by our market intelligence activities.
The non-securitisation SPE population is diverse in terms of both country
and sector links and types of activity. These SPEs are often part of complex,
cross-border corporate structures, often facilitating intermediation activity
elsewhere in the chain. Looking at sponsors of SPEs (Figure 1a), these straddle
the financial and non-financial sectors and a number of regions with domestic
sponsors comprising 14 per cent of the total, by asset. In fact, disaggregating
the other category provides almost 60 combinations of country and sector.
Looking at activities (Figure 1b), non-securitisation SPEs span 14 pre-defined
types of activity and a small residual category. Nevertheless, four categories
comprise over 80 per cent of the sector in terms of total assets, namely
investment fund linked, external financing, intergroup financing, and
operational leasing. The two largest categories are presented below as
business models to draw out some BoP relevant issues. For a full list of
activities in our population, see Golden and Hughes (2018).

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