by Mish Shedlock, The Maven:

The less risky tranche of the bonds will not be paid back to investors if there are more than 2,500 deaths in developing countries as a result of a pandemic. Although China has recorded more than this number of deaths, the World Bank does not designate it a developing country.

By far the riskier of the two bonds is “Class B,” which sold $95 million in bonds (compared to $225 million for the less risky “Class A,” explained above). For Class B, if the disease crosses an international border and if there are at least 20 deaths in that second country, the investors’ money will be paid to developing countries dealing with the outbreak.

I do not come up with $425 million total. $225 million plus $95 million does not total $425 million.

Only those class B bonds are going to trigger.

An international crisis is brewing. There are 19 deaths in Iran, 12 in Italy, and 12 in South Korea.

One more death in Iran is all it takes unless there are other restrictions.

Designed to Fail

Bodo Ellmers, the director of the Global Policy Forum’s sustainable development finance program told the Financial Times the instrument was “useless.”

“You obviously want to prevent a pandemic but it only pays out when it becomes a pandemic,” he said.

Olga Jones, who worked as an economist at the World Bank for three decades, said it was absurd that discussions for a second round of bonds for what is known officially as the Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility (PEF) had begun, as they were effectively “designed to fail.”

Many critics have also pointed to the fact that the severe attack of Ebola that hit the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2018 did not meet the conditions to trigger payment of the pandemic bonds despite the fact that almost 500 people died and that it was one of the largest outbreaks ever recorded.

Payout and Maturity

The Class A bonds feature an interest rate of 7% while the Class B bonds’ rate is 11%.

According to the PEF, around $75.5 million had been paid to bondholders in the form of premiums as of August 2019. The full amount paid in interest and coupons has not been disclosed. The bonds are set to mature in July 2020.

Painful Problem

The Wall Street Journal discusses the Painful Problem With Pandemic Bonds

The idea behind pandemic bonds, issued by the World Bank in 2017, is simple: They pay investors a solid return, but if a pandemic breaks out, the principal is redirected to help low-income countries pay for their emergency response.

An investor who doesn’t do the legwork is liable to get burned when the bonds don’t behave as expected. At 386 pages, the prospectus for the World Bank’s class-B securities isn’t a light read.

The second and larger problem with pandemic bonds is one they don’t share with other catastrophe-related securities. During extreme events, they don’t offer a source of returns uncorrelated with major capital markets—one of the things buyers like most about the asset class.

Pandemic bonds are most likely to be triggered just as equities tumble and concerns about companies’ ability to finance themselves come to the fore, as now. In short, the asset class is uncorrelated with wider markets—except at the exact moment when that matters most. Then it is suddenly very correlated.

Questions Abound

These bonds pay interest. How does the Wold Bank pay that interest?

Generally, companies issue bonds for expansion and expect to pay the debt back from future profits or current income.

What is the World Bank invested in or doing with the money to pay way above market rates?

Only the $95 million in class B bonds will trigger. But at 11% interest with a maturity date coming up, most of that money has been paid out.

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