Readings in Money and Banking: Selected and AdaptedPhillips, Chester Arthur
General
Readings in Money and Banking: Selected and Adapted
Phillips, Chester Arthur
Banks and banking; Banks and banking -- United States; Money
What the foregoing means will perhaps become more clear if it is
realized that in the first case the American agent of the foreign lender
draws a ninety days' sight sterling bill for, say, L100,000 on the
lender, and hands the actual bill over to the parties here who want the
money. Upon the latter falls the task of selling the bill, and, ninety
days later, when the time of repayment comes, the duty of returning a
_demand_ bill for L100,000, plus the stipulated commission. In the
second kind of a loan the borrower has nothing to do with the exchange
part of the transaction, the American banking agent of the foreign
lender turning over to the borrower not a sterling draft but the dollar
proceeds of a sterling draft. How the exchange market fluctuates in the
meantime--what rate may have to be paid at the end of ninety days for
the necessary demand draft--concerns the borrower not at all. He
received dollars in the first place, and when the loan comes due he pays
back dollars, plus 4, 5, or 6 per cent., as the case may be. What rate
has to be paid for the demand exchange affects the banker only, not the
borrower.
Loans made under the first conditions are known as sterling, mark, or
franc loans; the other kind are usually called "currency loans." At the
risk of repetition, it is to be said that in the case of sterling loans
the borrower pays a flat commission and takes the risk of what rate he
may have to pay for demand exchange when the loan comes due. In the case
of a currency loan the borrower knows nothing about the foreign exchange
transaction. He receives dollars, and pays them back with a fixed rate
of interest, leaving the whole question and risk of exchange to the
lending banker.
To illustrate the mechanism of one of these sterling loans. Suppose the
London Bank, Ltd., to have arranged with the New York Bank to have the
latter loan out L100,000 in the New York market. The New York Bank draws
L100,000 of ninety days' sight bills, and, satisfactory collateral
having been deposited, turns them over to the brokerage house of Smith &
Jones, the borrowers. Smith & Jones at once sell the L100,000, receiving
therefor, say, $484,000.
The bills sold by Smith & Jones find their way to London by the first
steamer, are accepted and discounted. Ninety days later they will come
due and have to be paid, and ten days prior to their maturity the New
York Bank will be expecting Smith & Jones to send in a _demand_ draft
for L100,000, plus 3/8 per cent. commission, making L375 additional.
This L100,375 less its commission for having handled the loan, the New
York Bank will send to London, where it will arrive a couple of days
before the L100,000 of ninety days' sight bills originally drawn on the
London Bank, Ltd., mature.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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