Friday 16 January 2009

More bank bailouts

The numbers get bigger and the financial system across the world continues to slide.

The BoA bailout

Bank of America will on Friday receive $20bn in fresh capital from the US government and a guarantee on most of a further $118bn of potential losses on toxic assets. The emergency bail-out will help to cushion the blow from a deteriorating balance sheet at Merrill Lynch, the brokerage BofA acquired earlier this month.

The Anglo Irish bank bailout

The Dublin government on Thursday night nationalised Anglo Irish Bank, the Irish Republic’s third largest lender, which has seen the collapse of its share price accelerate in recent days amid fresh reports of large-scale deposit withdrawals. The move, announced by Brian Lenihan, finance minister, ends attempts to keep the bank in private ownership. It was prompted by fears that the bank could be declared insolvent, which would trigger a state’s guarantee and leave the government responsible for settling close to €100bn of liabilities, including €50bn of customer deposits and €20bn of wholesale deposits.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

There are more bailouts to come.