OREANDA-NEWS. The Central Bank has released its statistics on market-based financing activities of financial and non-financial firms incorporated in Ireland at end-December 2015.

Trends in financing of all Irish-resident entities

  • The outstanding amount of debt securities issued by Irish resident entities (including Government) was €840.5 billion at end-December 2015, which was a fall of 2.2 per cent year-on year.  There was little change to the outstanding amount of debt securities issued by euro area residents, which rose by just 0.3 per cent over the same period.

  • Debt financing for the banking sector stood at €60.2 billion at the end of December 2015, a decrease of nearly €3 billion from the same month last year.

  • Equity shares had a market capitalisation of €577 billion at end-December.  Quoted shares (€576.8 billion), which account for over 99 per cent of total equity, saw an increase of 50.4 per cent over the year.  This is largely due to the impact of mergers & acquisitions by redomiciled entities in the NFC sector over the year.  The value of the stock of quoted shares issued by euro area residents increased by 12.8 per cent.

Banking Sector

At the end of December 2015, the outstanding amount of bank bonds was €60.2 billion, a decrease of €3.1 billion over the month – (Charts 1 & 2).  Over the year to December 2015, the outstanding value of bank bonds decreased by 4.7 per cent.  This reduction primarily reflected a fall of €7 billion in long-term debt securities, which was offset somewhat by an increase of €4 billion in short-term debt securities.  Long term debt securities account for 76.8 per cent of the total debt securities issued by the banking sector.

Over the past twelve months, the total outstanding amount of debt securities for the banking sector across the euro area decreased by 6.2 per cent.

The market value of equities in the banking sector in Ireland increased by 39.1 per cent over the year, to stand at €31.2 billion     (Chart 3) as of December 2015. 

Other Financial Intermediaries

The outstanding amount of debt securities issued by the other financial institutions (OFI) sector decreased by €21.7 billion in December, to stand at €641.7 billion (Charts 4 & 5).  This was a decrease of 3.8 per cent over the year.  Long term debt securities account for 93.8 per cent of the total debt securities issued by the OFI sector.

Over the past twelve months, the total outstanding amount of debt securities for the OFI sector across the euro area increased by 3.5 per cent.

In December 2015, the value of the quoted shares in the OFI sector in Ireland increased by €0.6 billion from the previous month to stand at €21 billion.  This represented an increase of 15 per cent over the year (Chart 6).

Non-Financial Corporations

In December 2015, the value of the quoted shares in the non-financial corporations (NFC) sector decreased by €19.5 billion (-3.6 per cent) from the previous month to stand at €524.3 billion.  This decrease was largely due to the impact of market price and foreign exchange rate changes.  There was an increase of 53.1 per cent over the year, largely due to mergers and acquisitions by redomiciled entities (Chart 7 & 8).

Over the past twelve months, the total market capitalisation of equities for NFCs in the euro area increased by 14.5 per cent.

The outstanding amount of debt securities issued by NFCs increased year-on-year by €2.3 billion to stand at €10.8 billion in December 2015.