Unfair value: FVA's hidden charms

This month's cover story illustration uses Dr Frankenstein’s monster as a visual metaphor for dealers’ attempts to apply fair-value accounting to funding valuation adjustment (FVA). In part, that’s because the results, so far, are ugly – the numbers are being stitched together using an assortment of ungainly approximations – and in part, it’s because auditors are terrified they will have to grapple with these inventions. Even some banks are looking on with disquiet.

But the metaphor works on