CIBC stock falls after profit loss at bond insurer
Monday, March 17, 2008
TORONTO — — Shares of Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce slumped as much as 6 per cent on Monday morning after one of the monoline bond insurers it has exposure to reported a hefty quarter loss.
CIBC was also caught up in a wider market downturn as the banking sector pulled the Toronto Stock Exchange down due to more signs of trouble in U.S. financial markets. CIBC was down $3.07, or 5 per cent, at $56.83 just after 3 p.m. EDT, after touching as low as $56.25 earlier in the session.
U.S. bond insurer FGIC Corp., the parent company of Financial Guaranty Insurance Co., posted a loss of $1.89-billion (U.S.) for the fourth quarter due to writedowns of collateralized debt obligations.
CIBC, which has been hard hit by its exposure to U.S. subprime mortgage-related securities, has $566-million in notional subprime exposure to FGIC, said Brad Smith, analyst at Blackmont Capital, in a research note.
"These losses and the FGIC's potential reorganization is more negative news for CIBC," wrote Mr. Smith. "We note that FGIC was a major player in the collateralized loan obligation (CLO) market, leading us to believe FGIC could be a sizeable counterparty to CIBC's $22-billion in nonsubprime monoline hedges, the majority of which are CLOs."
CIBC reported pretax charges of $3.38-billion (Canadian) on securities related to the subprime market and credit protection in the last quarter and executives acknowledged more writedowns may be needed.
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