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the party's over for iceland

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    the party's over for iceland

    Santander has about a trillion dollars in assets, so a short position of a couple of hundred millions is totally insignificant, in addition to being a dumb play in the long term. As the banking industry is going to be thinned out, the remaining players will emerge stronger. Santander has been used as an example of what banks should have been doing.

    I've always wanted to visit Iceland, but the thought of it just being a place festering with stretch humvees somehow doesn't make it all that appealing of a place.

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      the party's over for iceland

      Regarding Santander, what is it about them and their business practices that is different and more admirable than their competitors?

      A friend of mine who was a Barclays business manager told me that they were more sensible in lending than the others and got out of the bad credit market pretty early and as such suffered minimal losses hence why they are the Uk High street bank in the best position (HSBC are backed by the Chineese economy).

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        the party's over for iceland

        My local city council, despite merely being a suburb, made the headlines on the Dutch news today. They had more money in Icesave than any other municipality in the country. 15 million euros, or 200 euro per citizen.

        Last year they cut down a load of trees and bushes, claiming they didn't have the money to maintain them anymore. I thought it was a lame excuse at the time. And it turns out they had 15 million stashed away the whole time.

        Fuckers.

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          the party's over for iceland

          PBS radio had a long feature on Santander last week, with a good interview of its director. In a couple of sentences, they have more conservative lending approaches and didn't get into trendy financial tools and markets that were outside of their traditional practices. It's actually a pretty aggressive bank, but they limit their expansion to safe areas and proven partners.

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            the party's over for iceland

            But they Santander paid alot of money for Abbey national and other banks in spain at the top of the market.
            To be honest, i do not know if Abbey's loan policy was as risky as Northern Rock or Alliance and leicester maybe you could fill me in.

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              the party's over for iceland

              Anybody know anything about how the Co-op bank is doing? It never seems to get mentioned at all in the news.

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                the party's over for iceland

                Not that I know anything about banking, but there was an interesting feature on Spanish banks on the German radio this morning. They were saying that they'd had a banking crisis there in the 1980s, as a result of which they'd introduced a pretty rigid and effective regulatory system. The Spanish banks were forced to keep a certain amount of solid assets, and couldn't pull off as much risky shit as banks elsewhere, which explains why they're now in a relatively healthy position.

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                  the party's over for iceland

                  Like Jimski I'd like to know about the co-op. What little money I have in the UK is in the Co-op, and they also are the main creditor of Sheffield Wednesday FC.

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                    the party's over for iceland

                    No news is good news Ad-Hoc.
                    For a start regardless what shape they are in, the govenment have made it clear that all retail deposits are safe. So unless you have millions in a business account, then your cool.

                    Alderman.
                    So what of Santander and other Spanish banks exposure to the local property market where houseprice inflation was even worse than in the UK and Eire?

                    Granted alot of it was from rich Northern Europeans buying up their properties (borrowed in their native lands) but i am surte the spanish banks have had a large taste of that market.

                    Or did they not go for all that securitisation and dabbling in the American market?

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                      the party's over for iceland

                      No, I'm not worried about my money (we're talking about a couple of hundred quid, here, anyway), just what is the situation with the bank in general. The reason my money is in that bank is because it always seemed a better more ethical place to have it anyway. I'm just wondering if their stance on investments was also carried over into an avoidance of some of the more high(low) end financial chicanery

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                        the party's over for iceland

                        TG: they did a lot of securitisation themselves (and covered bonds), which helped fuel the housing boom, but they weren't big investors outside of their domestic market, unlike UK and German banks for example. They didn't sponsor any off balance sheet conduits, for instance. And it was only recently that securitisation became a funding rather than a liquidity tool - until about 2004/2005, most Spanish securitisations were retained to be used with the ECB, which is exactly what they're doing now.

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                          the party's over for iceland

                          In laymans terms?

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                            the party's over for iceland

                            Jimski wrote:
                            Anybody know anything about how the Co-op bank is doing? It never seems to get mentioned at all in the news.
                            They're poised to take over someone or other, I think.

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                              the party's over for iceland

                              They're talking to Britannia about a takeover/merger, presumably one in which Co-op would be the survivor.

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                                the party's over for iceland

                                Britannia. I've just looked it up.

                                Edit: not as fast as the Ursus hive though.

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                                  the party's over for iceland

                                  That was it.

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                                    the party's over for iceland

                                    The Britannia's website is down........ ominous.

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                                      the party's over for iceland

                                      An interesting development in Iceland from this morning's FT.

                                      "Iceland has turned to two women to rebuild its financial system after the banking empire built by its young, male business-schooled elite collapsed.

                                      Elín Sigfúsdóttir and Birna Einarsdóttir are set to become chief executives of New Landsbanki and New Glitnir respectively, the nationalised banks created by the Icelandic government in the wake of the crisis.

                                      One government minister said their appointments were an attempt to signal a new culture within the banking system.

                                      . . . .

                                      "Now the women are taking over," said one government official. "It's typical, the men make the mess and the women come in to clean it up."

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                                        the party's over for iceland

                                        Apparently the Cats Protection League has £11.2m in Iceland. New centres are now at risk.



                                        Anti-terror legislation is too good for this country.

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                                          the party's over for iceland

                                          One of my old favourite's has suddenly gone very quiet:

                                          http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/warm-words-for-icelandic-boom-return-to-haunt-salmond-961399.html

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                                            the party's over for iceland

                                            From the above article:

                                            Two pillars of the Scottish economy, RBS and HBOS, are now part-owned by UK taxpayers after being bailed to the tune of £31.5bn by the Treasury. The crisis has left analysts asking how an independent Scotland could have saved the two banks from collapse, on a GDP of £100bn a year.
                                            HBOS and and RBS are a UK-wide operation. In the case of an independent Scotland, the burden would have been shared between England and Scotland anyway, as was done by the Benelux countries when Fortis went under.

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                                              the party's over for iceland

                                              And Scotland would be in the Euro, so it's not quite a fair comparison.

                                              Still, I hope the fall of Iceland will at least mean we English won't be lectured by Salmond and Neil Oliver about how we've held back this forward thinking country with our short sighted policies of pursuing growth in financial services.

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                                                the party's over for iceland

                                                I might have been a bit harsh on Neil Oliver there. Which is not something I say often.

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                                                  the party's over for iceland

                                                  Michael Lewis explains it all.

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