| 摘要 | ABSTRACT
Domestic over-the-counter market (OTC) began with the approval of derivative product business of general goods from commercial banks since 2006 with focus on foreign trade supplies. Global over-the-counter markets have recently been growing rapidly, but the domestic market, compared to the leading nations such as the United States or the United Kingdom, is lacking in financial infrastructure and expertise with insufficient markets and system to manage market risks. With the recent increase in over-the-counter market disputes regarding the ELS and others, the importance of protection for investors is being emphasized. Based on the Capital Market Act of September 2013, the Financial Services Commission has resolved upon the approval of OTC trade industry.
Meanwhile, nations around the world including Singapore and China are focusing upon investments for developing future markets and institutional support to stimulate energy product trades, and is also putting efforts to further develop the corresponding hub for the energy financial market. Going along with this global trend, Korea has also put forward a government goal to develop Yeosu-Ulsan oil hub. Also, several plans to promote energy product trade, such as creating an electronic trade internet website from the Korean Exchange Market and planning for establishing a future market for petroleum products, are in progress with consideration towards the domestic supply and demand situation in order to naturally form a petroleum product price range. Investment interests towards the energy industry and related products within the domestic OTC market are on the rise but, due to technological limits and other non-commercial risks, the investors are hesitant upon approaching this subject and the efforts to improve the relevant institutions upon these problems are still in the beginning stages. Despite the active efforts, due to comparatively less-advanced financial infrastructure and the rigorous energy market conditions, effects of institutional improvements are being undertoned, and the incentives for market investors are lacking; particularly for the private oil refinery companies that are responsible for the monopolistic oil market.
This paper proposes a strategy to revitalize energy investment which fits into the domestic OTC trades while also examining the pending issue of energy and financial product investments through OTC trades based on the advancements of financial markets and related law within the major countries around the world. Especially this paper focuses upon deriving a strategy to invigorate the OTC market for South Korea's developing financial market through an empirical analysis of syndicate loan trading thereby finding a way to promote domestic energy market price mechanism with invigoration of energy financial investments.
Current domestic exchange-traded derivative market's trading volume is 8th largest in its trading volume in the world. The domestic exchange-traded market has 15 derivative markets based off of 15 different standards including stock quotes and shares while 90% of trades are made up of stock futures and option trades. Trade within the OTC derivatives market is mainly made between banks. Trading status shows 90% are made between banks while Non-Deliverable Forward (NDF) takes up 72.3% and Interest Rate Swap (IRS) products at 21.5%. Comparatively, the scale of domestic OTC derivatives market is only 27% of exchange-traded market, but the OTC balance is more than 80 times larger than that of the latter. That implies that within the domestic exchange-traded derivatives markets and OTC markets, energy derivative products are of less importance. Based on the research results of 2013, the overall global weight taken up by energy derivative products are 4-5% of the entire derivative market. But as for South Korea, despite having a larger share of petroleum and petrochemistry product exports, there is not a market to manage risks related to these products.
Taking a look into the domestic energy industry's hedge trade status, for oil companies that are mainly importing businesses, incentives from hedge trade are weak. There are two major reasons to this background. First, an importing business like the energy companies provides products through expected production method. Therefore, by being able to hold small amounts of foreign currency assets for short-terms, there is not a large incentive from hedging. Second, companies such as oil refineries that hold domestic market dominance, incentives from hedge trades are even more obsolete. And it is because they are able to pass on the cost from not hedging onto the consumers.
Based on the analysis of domestic energy industry fund investment cases, the significance of promoting the participation of private investors into long-term large scale businesses with uncertainties is apparent. However, there exists a discrepancy from an ideal direction of future financial market development based on market liberalism with two sides of mobilizing policy finance including increasing the maximum percentage of coverage for export credit agency to promote the participation of uninterested private and corporate investors during the investor recruitment phase as well as failing to throughly examine investment options during the review phase of the business. For fund investment profitability and stainability to improve through market principles, risk-covering policies employing public financing should be little used in the future whilst an insightful risk hedging strategy propulsion needs to be utilized through derivative trading using finance engineering between market investors, or through spot or derivative trading in the exchanges or OTC. Especially when it comes to energy finance products and related business investments, due to the unique nature of the industry, because trade purpose and tendency varies based on trading individuals, costs are high and investors show a tendency to avoid leaking trade information; therefore, investors and businesses prefer to confirm hedge strategies through OTC trades rather than through the exchanges. Generally, buyers and sellers that participate in OTC trades than central market trading witness higher information asymmetries. The information asymmetry becomes larger when the investment target is technically complicated from the financial investor's perspective and is eventually passed on to become additional search costs for market traders.
Compared to the leading nation's financial markets, the domestic financial market lacks consultative capacity for energy industries and related product investments, and the ability to evaluate future business value is falling short as well. The lack of expertises and skilled traders becomes a large obstacle when it comes to large OTC financial transactions in which the information asymmetry between dealers is large. In other words, the main reason behind lack of energy project investments through OTC financial trades is because of the uncertainty of long-term future profitability for the financial investment institutions when it comes to making a decision to invest upon an energy business. The effects of information asymmetry applies equally towards energy industries such as oil refineries and power producers relying upon risk hedge strategy through OTC trades. These energy companies have larger financial burden compared to exporters because they have less incentives to carry out risky hedging trades. Even if domestic energy companies hire OTC experienced financial experts, it is hard to secure a financial network that is able to immediately react to the market timing of resource price volatility, and it also becomes additional transaction cost burden.
Additionally, the unfavorable business regulation for investment banks (IBs) in growing into a capital management-based supplier such as net capital ratio (NCR) regulations and regulations on foreign exchange dealing range by the investment banks have become a difficult obstacle to overcome in diversifying capital management through foreign investments and has become one of the main reasons for increasing OTC trade searching costs. Consequently, domestic IBs are falling behind foreign competitors in securing higher value-added projects due to lack of capital; an end-result from weak institutional milieu and lack of internal capability.
Because domestic experts are lacking in competence and experience when it comes to derivative finance for energy business and products, during
the early phases of OTC financial development, utilizing a creditable matchmaker to reduce trade costs and build up on investment competency seems to be desirable. This research focuses and examines upon the strategy of utilizing highly creditable international IBs as a renowned matchmaker and their network for OTC finance trade development. In order to properly utilize the international IBs, an institutional strategy to check up on their monopolistic strength of information is also essential. And the reform of OTC trade information disclosure system being made around the world recently seems like the perfect fit as the institutional device in complementing the international IB network strategy. Based upon the results of empirical analysis on OTC syndicate loan market, it has been confirmed that unneeded additional cost caused by information asymmetry within the OTC market can be significantly reduced with a cooperative strategy with an IB that has experience in participating in technical projects or related investments. And especially when the information was disclosed between financial investors, the complementary effect turned out to be more significant. That is to say, this research emphasizes that a strategy of utilizing a creditable international IB network to promote OTC energy investments can become a lot more effective when complemented with an institution which reveals all OTC trade information upon the players of the market. |
