Word: bankes
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Despite interest-rate cuts last week in the U.S., Europe and Asia, businesses throughout the world are finding it nearly impossible to borrow and money-market rates remain abnormally high. In Hong Kong, for example, the one-month interbank offered rate, the benchmark for short-term bank lending, rose to 5% last week even as the city cut its policy rate from 3.5% to 2.5%. Banks remain leery of lending in the face of further financial-industry failures...
...credit crisis is hurting even small Hong Kong businesses, according to Danny Lau, chairman of the Hong Kong Small and Medium Enterprise Association. "Bankers are tightening loans," Lau says. "That will affect most small businesses. Some of them have loans from banks in order to run their operations. Now they will have to tighten up, or they will have to contract in the future." Last week, U-Right, a clothing retailer with about 100 outlets in Hong Kong and another 500 in China, was forced to liquidate after it could not meet bank demands to repay its debts. By Sunday...
...fruits of tense negotiations between the government and British lenders - talks given added urgency by the meltdown in global markets at the end of last week - the bailout is breathtaking for its scale. British taxpayers are on the hook for a $34 billion investment in the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), Britain's second-largest lender, a cash injection amounting to almost double the bank's current market capitalization. Most of the investment will take the form of ordinary shares, which private investors are invited to purchase along with the government. But under the deal, those shares yield no dividends...
...bosses at RBS, the bailout will be particularly humiliating. Only last April, the Edinburgh-based bank called on investors for some $20 billion in much-needed capital, after subprime-related losses - and an ill-timed takeover last year of Dutch bank ABN Amro - blew a big hole in its balance sheet. "It's immensely regretful we're coming to shareholders to raise funds again," said RBS chairman Tom McKillop. "It's something we feel bad about." So bad, in fact, that McKillop now plans to quit next year; RBS CEO Fred Goodwin resigned Monday, as did his counterpart at HBOS...
...effort to revive Britain's flagging banking sector has reversed the government's fortunes. Prime Minister Brown's broadly popular plan - which includes extra liquidity for banks and government guarantees for their debt - has inspired similar rescue packages across Europe. Still, one model won't fit all. "Some countries consider they don't have an insolvency problem, and are focusing more on providing guarantees to improve liquidity in the markets," says Antonio Ramirez, banking analyst at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods in London. (On Monday, for instance, Spain said it would guarantee new bank debt until...