It might be a secret, but it is not a surprise; the FSA is trying to off-load the buy-to-let bank Bradford and Bingley. The Telegraph reported:
"The City regulator is involved in secret talks to engineer a takeover of Bradford & Bingley as it seeks a permanent solution to secure the future of the embattled buy-to-let mortgage lender.
In the wake of a tumultuous week in global equity and credit markets which saw HBOS, Britain's biggest home-loan provider, agree an emergency sale to Lloyds TSB, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) is understood to have been in contact with Santander, the Spanish banking group that owns Abbey and has just bought Alliance & Leicester; ING, the Dutch banking group; and National Australia Bank, which owns the Yorkshire and Clydesdale banks, to gauge their interest in a takeover of B&B."
Three of the top ten UK mortgage lenders have fallen: Northern Rock, HBOS, and the Alliance and Leicester. The B&B is likely to follow.
What happens if nobody is interested in buying the B&B?
5 comments:
Now that all deposits are guaranteed, the B&B dies a slow agonizing decline.
When its remains are cheap enough, I shall buy it and run it with my daughter. We'll rename it D & D - Dour and Daughter. Dour bankers are what we need; cautious, nay downright suspicious, chaps who want near certainty that debts will be repaid and not squandered on frivolity.
Anyone read "The Ropespinner Conspiracy" by Michael Thomas. It's a fictional political thriller about a KGB agent who infilitrates US banking in order to get them to recklessly innovate until they bankrupt capitalism and the communists take over.
Here's Bob Hoye's take
http://209.167.242.200/showarticle.cfm?id=8351&pv=1
Sounds interesting.
Nick
It remains to be seen if whoever takes it over get the same sweetened deal as lloydsTSB.
Were the details ever revealed?
What's wrong with calling it a day, appointing a liquidator and giving the bank to the bond holders?
They are hardly likely to bankrupt their own bank, are they?
Post a Comment