  On the demand side, the investor base has been and remains severely eroded and many earlier active investors, such as SIVs and money market funds, are not expected to return to the market anytime soon. Europe in particular suffers from a lack of a significant real-money investor base that could step in.   On the supply side, concomitantly, the profit generating potential of securitisation remains insufficient, since spreads for various ABS still exceed the break-even levels from the issuer’s perspective. At the current levels of spreads, securitisation does not make economic sense for originators in most cases. At the same time, it would appear that current yields, with some exceptions, are not attractive to compensate for the perceived risks in the view of many investors. Therefore, although there are some signs of improvement, the current situation in structured finance continues to impose market funding constraints on banks and to hamper banks in  1  See “The Euro Area Bank Lending Survey”, April 2010, ECB. BIS Review 84/2010  3  providing credit to the economy. In this sense, securitisation is still certainly unable to fulfil the objectives that I highlighted at the beginning of my speech. Going forward, the key question is therefore: how do we bring back investors to the securitisation markets? This is tantamount to asking: how can investor confidence in securitisation be restored?
Dear guests, At the end of my speech I would like to emphasise that, although the challenges ahead are serious, their successfully countering is within our possibilities, if we all will know to rise to these challenges. I invite you to have an open and fruitful discussion, aiming at identifying a common work agenda for the continuing period. Thank You! 4/4  BIS central bankers' speeches