Word: banking
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Even for a proud old bank like Belgo-Dutch giant Fortis, with nearly 300-year-old roots and Catherine the Great among its historic clients, playing a role in last fall's $100 billion takeover of Dutch rival ABN Amro was a big moment. In the largest financial services deal ever signed, Fortis - part of a consortium alongside the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and Spain's Santander - put up $34 billion in return for ABN's Dutch banking business, among other assets...
...Less than a year after the blockbuster deal, the Belgian, Dutch and Luxembourg governments agreed to inject $16 billion into an ailing Fortis, laid low by ongoing uncertainty in global credit markets. In return for the lifeline, each of the three Benelux governments took a 49% share in Fortis' banking units in their own countries. The part-nationalization of Belgium's biggest lender, which, with a worldwide staff of 85,000, is Europe's largest to be bailed out so far since the credit crisis began. It was a last resort, coming after all efforts to flog the bank...
...Fortis isn't alone among the banks in that once lauded consortium to fall on hard times; mighty RBS has since written off billions of dollars in sub-prime related losses, and even turned desperately to shareholders in June for some $20 billion in fresh capital. But if both lenders testify to the shaky health of many of the world's biggest banks, Santander, the third leg of the trio, seems to have gone from strength to strength. Indeed, while Fortis was receiving life support on Sunday, the Spanish bank was administering much needed first...
...billion dollar losses and complex financial assets, Santander's fortunes speak to the advantages of a simpler approach. Spain's largest bank "lends to their clients, takes deposits from their clients, and runs a network of branches," says Antonio Ramirez, analyst at investment bank Keefe, Bruyette & Woods in London. "It's quite simple, quite traditional." Focused on retail banking, with limited investment banking operations, and with a long-buoyant domestic market to lean on, Santander side-stepped the toxic assets caught up in the collapse of the U.S. sub-prime mortgage market. Enjoying "good growth at home, they were never...
...reached a tentative agreement on a government rescue strategy for the fraught U.S. economy. After intense, partisan negotiations, the core proposal of Secretary of the Treasury Henry M. Paulson’s original $700 billion bailout plan remains largely intact. Originally conceived and announced last week amid unprecedented U.S. bank failure and market turmoil, the bailout plan will appear in front of the House of Representatives this morning. The aim of the Paulson proposal, if passed, will be to inject liquidity into the stagnant credit markets, which must be greased in order to prevent further deterioration of the financial sector...