The global credit crunch, led by rising defaults in the beleaguered U.S. subprime mortgage market, could be "quite ugly" for another six months, TD Bank chief executive Ed Clark told an investor conference Tuesday.
"I think it's going to be quite ugly in the next few months," Clark told the Scotia Capital financial summit in Toronto. "I'm sort of hoping that by next March, we're through this."
Clark said Canadian banks were in a better position to weather the crisis than many other countries. "Canada is in very good shape so the problems that we have here will be of shorter duration," he said.
Clark also said the current market volatility presents opportunities for his bank — a sentiment echoed by several other bank CEOs at the conference.
"This market presents opportunities for large, well-capitalized, well-diversified financial institutions," Royal Bank CEO Gord Nixon said.
"Risk is being more appropriately priced, which will positively impact our return on assets in the long term."
Bank of Montreal CEO Bill Downe agreed that market volatility "may ultimately benefit both our trading business and the corporate loan book."
Downe said his bank and others should brace for "some headwinds" until the credit markets settles down, but noted that he has seen "an improvement in the tone of the [commercial paper] market in the last week."
Canadian banks control two-thirds of the $120-billion market in Canadian asset-backed commercial paper (ABCP) — the short-term debt products that have been jolted recently by a lack of investor confidence.
Canada's big banks have pledged to support liquidity in all the ABCP they sponsor. The banks have limited or no direct exposure to the U.S. subprime market.
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