Paul Halpern (1)

This is an explanation of the technical restructuring of the Canadian Asset Backed Commercial Paper (ABCP) market after its 2007 collapse. It's not about the behind-the scenes negotiations which led to the market solution, which is what I was hoping to read about in this book. This book is not on a par to Hank Paulsen's book about the U.S. bailouts.

Similarly there was little about the large role the late Purdy Crawford played in the negotiations. I suspect that most of the key players are not yet willing to talk about the process, or are constrained by confidentiality obligations.

The solution to the collapse was not a market bailout by the government despite pressure on the federal government to come to the "rescue" of the players. In the end the government gave limited support to a financing facility, for which it was compensated. The lesson (to use the authors' term for the rest of the workout) is that a market can save itself with motivated negotiations where everyone is willing to compromise, rather than face further losses through litigation in the courts.

It's incredible that large institutional investment managers were more or less asleep at the switch with respect to the non-bank ABCP's. The authors' noted that "some heads rolled".

There was no biographical information about any of the 4 co-authors and without additional research about them, readers are left to wonder about their qualifications.
There's not a lot written about the 2007 ABCP market collapse yet. The press coverage at the time may be the largest body of work right now. This book is a good first step to increasing the body of information.… (más)