Sean Egan, founder and boss of the agency, worried that Ford relied too heavily on bonds secured against customer repayments of car loans.

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Demand for longer-dated government bonds has come from other sorts of fund managers too, such as those with portfolios of mortgage-backed securities (bonds secured against lots of mortgages).

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Examples of secured funding include covered bonds, repurchase agreements and the European Central Bank's Long-Term Refinancing Operation.

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This week, Marne et Champagne, a French champagne maker planning a stockmarket listing, said that it is replacing bank debt with euro400m in bonds, secured against its champagne stocks.

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In seeking to achieve its investment objective, the Fund will invest in senior secured loans, high yield corporate bonds and investment grade-rated collateralized loan obligations.

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The bonds promised to pay investors 10% interest, secured by oil and gas reserves, production and an investment portfolio, with no risk, the SEC quoted the documents as saying.

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Things like that could be something as simple as non-traded real estate investment trusts, or secured floating-rate income, as opposed to fixed income or bonds.

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Safe banks are easy enough to create: just push up their capital requirements to 90% of assets, force them to have secured funding for three years or tell them they can invest only in Treasury bonds.

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Banks have become increasingly dependent on various forms of secured borrowing, especially in what's known as the repo market, which is where banks swap bonds and other assets for loans from hedge funds and specialist parts of banks (yes there are banks at both ends of this market).

BBC: Business