Guillaume Ouellet Leblanc is Director of the Financial Intermediation Risk Evaluation (FIRE) team in the Financial Stability Department. In this role, he leads a team responsible for identifying and assessing the system-wide vulnerabilities related to financial institutions and non-bank financial intermediaries. The team focuses on understanding how changes to the financial and economic landscape can affect the business model of these entities, their behaviours, and their resilience.
Another important function of the team is to conduct analysis to evaluate the potential for such entities to amplify negative shocks and to contribute to broader risks in the Canadian financial system. FIRE also works collaboratively on a variety of entities-focused projects, including stress testing and the assessment of macroprudential regulatory policies.
Guillaume has extensive knowledge of the banking sector, asset management industry and capital markets. Prior to his current role, he held various positions in the Financial Markets, Financial Stability and Funds Management and Banking departments. He holds a M.A. in Economics from the Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium) and the PRM designation.
We examine the potential impacts of a severe economic shock on the resilience of major banks in Canada. We find these banks would suffer significant financial losses but nevertheless remain resilient. This underscores the role well-capitalized banks and sound underwriting practices play in supporting economic activity in a downturn.
We assess the response of Government of Canada bond yields to the Bank of Canada’s initial announcement of the Government Bond Purchase Program (GBPP) as well as to the Bank’s later GBPP purchase operations.
The TSX index rose by 9.5 percent in November 2020, adding large gains to an already sharp V-shaped recovery. The economic outlook improved at that time as well. We ask whether the stock market gains since last autumn are due to improving forecasts of firms’ earnings.
We show that a small number of authorized participants (APs) actively create and redeem shares of US-listed fixed-income exchange-traded funds (FI-ETFs). In 2019, three APs performed 82 percent of gross creations and redemptions of FI-ETF shares. In contrast, the group of active APs for equity ETFs was much more diverse.
Between February 19 and March 23, 2020, the Canadian stock market plunged due to the severe economic impact of COVID-19. By the end of the summer, the stock market had already recovered a significant portion of its losses, leaving many asking if investors see the economy through rose-coloured glasses. Despite these concerns, we find that current market valuations for companies on the Toronto Stock Exchange align well, on average, with the declines in earning forecasts observed since the start of the year. We also find these market valuations are consistent with the discount rate returning to its pre-pandemic level.
The liquidity management strategies of fund managers, supported by policy measures, have helped bond funds limit the increase in redemptions caused by COVID 19. This avoided further deterioration in liquidity in bond markets. Nevertheless, these funds were left with lower cash buffers, which could make them more vulnerable to additional large redemptions.
Bond dealers have traditionally kept bonds in an inventory until clients buy them. But now, dealers have another way to access bonds for their clients: the exchange-traded fund. We discuss this new way to manage bond dealing and what it might mean for bond markets.
The creation and redemption activity of fixed-income exchange-traded funds listed in the United States has shifted. Funds of established issuers have traditionally exchanged their shares for baskets of bonds. In contrast, young funds managed by new issuers tend to create and redeem their shares almost exclusively in cash. Cash transactions imply that new funds are taking on exposure to liquidity risk. This has implications for financial stability.
Lending to business is central to economic growth because it supports investment by firms. Knowing how market participants view risk in the financial system can give the Bank of Canada information about future growth in business loans. In this note, we look at three market-based risk measures and find that sudden increases in the perception of risk in the Canadian banking system are associated with a weaker outlook for business loans and real gross domestic product.
We introduce a new proxy for measuring corporate bond liquidity, using the price of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that hold corporate bonds. It measures the average liquidity across 900 corporate bonds every day, many more than other proxies used in previous Bank of Canada analysis. The new proxy nonetheless paints a very similar picture of liquidity conditions and confirms the previous findings: the liquidity of bonds has generally improved since 2010.
