Santander - Next bank in line for mass withdrawals of savings?

Santander - Next bank in line for mass withdrawals of savings?

Author
Discussion

DonkeyApple

55,479 posts

170 months

Monday 21st May 2012
quotequote all
munky said:
DonkeyApple said:
PRTVR said:
If I was in charge biggrin I would send them in now and read them the riot act, explain how long they will spend in jail and they will not be able to leave the country, I am sure this would nip it in the bud, but known how this lot work they will wait till after the event, then say we could not do anything.
Well there is certainly nothing the FSA can do.
Not true. The FSA swooped into Kaupthing Singer & Friedlander with an order to seize UK deposit accounts and transfer them to ING (plus an Administration order from the High Court, since £2bn disappearing from one side of the balance sheet tends to have an adverse impact) just in case the Icelandic parent tried to suck out cash. It had not, and hence the recovery rate for unsecured creditors of the UK subsidiary is - even after the millions in fees taken out by the Administrators - 73% so far and still paying out.

DonkeyApple said:
The law already defines what can and can't be done very clearly.
Which law is that then? Don't forget that winky invoked anti-terrorist laws to size Landsbanki assets before they could be spirited away.
DonkeyApple said:
Ergo the FSA would come into play of they were broken, but obviously that would be far too late.
Not true, see above.
By your own example, the FSA can only act after the event. If the event is the wholesale, illegal transfer of retail client funds there is nothing they can do.

What I have been talking about is putting work in to pre-empt such an event if it was thought remotely likely.

And the changes I was alluding to are the post Lehmans' ones: http://www.allenovery.com/AOWEB/Knowledge/Editoria...

munky

5,328 posts

249 months

Monday 21st May 2012
quotequote all
DonkeyApple said:
munky said:
DonkeyApple said:
PRTVR said:
If I was in charge biggrin I would send them in now and read them the riot act, explain how long they will spend in jail and they will not be able to leave the country, I am sure this would nip it in the bud, but known how this lot work they will wait till after the event, then say we could not do anything.
Well there is certainly nothing the FSA can do.
Not true. The FSA swooped into Kaupthing Singer & Friedlander with an order to seize UK deposit accounts and transfer them to ING (plus an Administration order from the High Court, since £2bn disappearing from one side of the balance sheet tends to have an adverse impact) just in case the Icelandic parent tried to suck out cash. It had not, and hence the recovery rate for unsecured creditors of the UK subsidiary is - even after the millions in fees taken out by the Administrators - 73% so far and still paying out.

DonkeyApple said:
The law already defines what can and can't be done very clearly.
Which law is that then? Don't forget that winky invoked anti-terrorist laws to size Landsbanki assets before they could be spirited away.
DonkeyApple said:
Ergo the FSA would come into play of they were broken, but obviously that would be far too late.
Not true, see above.
By your own example, the FSA can only act after the event. If the event is the wholesale, illegal transfer of retail client funds there is nothing they can do.

What I have been talking about is putting work in to pre-empt such an event if it was thought remotely likely.

And the changes I was alluding to are the post Lehmans' ones: http://www.allenovery.com/AOWEB/Knowledge/Editoria...
No, my example was before the event, as in no cash had been spirited away by the parent company. Indeed, the FSA acted to shut down a still solvent and profitable bank, but (mostly corporate) depositors were pulling cash out at an alarming rate, i.e. a bank run - what caused the bank to fail was depositors panicking. To put it in context though, the FSA found themselves overstretched and had bigger things to worry about than a trifling £2bn in a foreign-owned bank, so it was expedient to shut it down and move on, leaving court-appointed administrators to wind it up. Indeed, I would say it was politically easier to take that course of action with a foreign owned bank than with a UK owned one.

Lehman was a different animal primarily because there were no retail depositors, and the topic of discussion is the protection of UK depositors' cash from being spirited away by a desperate parent co. Lehman had no depositor cash.

Going back to my point though, if you have cash in Santander that is covered by FSCS (which itself is government backed), there is no reason whatsoever to withdraw cash, and anyone doing so is part of the problem. If everyone panics and pulls out their cash, it becomes self-fulfilling that the bank WILL fail, even if that panic is unfounded.

DonkeyApple

55,479 posts

170 months

Monday 21st May 2012
quotequote all
Not quite right though. Kaupthing was known to be in enormous trouble well in advance. It was insolvent when the FSA moved on S&F.

In addition the FSA only moved because it was told to by the Govt. also, it was already on the radar because of people like the Tzinguez brothers amongst others, as well as the Bauger chap.

It was also at the height of the problems and the Govt was focussed on nothing else.

In the case of Santander, if you wait until the parent is bust then you would be too late of they intend on raiding the UK assets. Hence the need to be talking to Santander UK and quite frankly monitoring some people's activities for tell tale signs.

This is a taxpayer risk not a sub £85k client risk.

Mermaid

21,492 posts

172 months

Monday 21st May 2012
quotequote all
munky said:
.. If everyone panics and pulls out their cash, it becomes self-fulfilling that the bank WILL fail, even if that panic is unfounded.
Isn't it the job of Government to assure its citizens that all is OK, in situations like this.

turbobloke

104,070 posts

261 months

Monday 21st May 2012
quotequote all
Mermaid said:
munky said:
.. If everyone panics and pulls out their cash, it becomes self-fulfilling that the bank WILL fail, even if that panic is unfounded.
Isn't it the job of Government to assure its citizens that all is OK, in situations like this.
smile

Here's a sample statement for use next time around, which you will recognise as posted on PH recently:

2007 HM Treasury and FSA Press Release said:
The FSA judges that Northern Rock is solvent, exceeds its regulatory capital requirement and has a good quality loan book. The decision to provide a liquidity support facility to Northern Rock reflects the difficulties that it has had in accessing longer term funding and the mortgage securitisation market, on which Northern Rock is particularly reliant.
It's bound to work again wink

DonkeyApple

55,479 posts

170 months

Monday 21st May 2012
quotequote all
Not quite right though. Kaupthing was known to be in enormous trouble well in advance. It was insolvent when the FSA moved on S&F.

In addition the FSA only moved because it was told to by the Govt. also, it was already on the radar because of people like the Tzinguez brothers amongst others, as well as the Bauger chap.

It was also at the height of the problems and the Govt was focussed on nothing else.

In the case of Santander, if you wait until the parent is bust then you would be too late of they intend on raiding the UK assets. Hence the need to be talking to Santander UK and quite frankly monitoring some people's activities for tell tale signs.

This is a taxpayer risk not a sub £85k client risk.

munky

5,328 posts

249 months

Monday 21st May 2012
quotequote all
DonkeyApple said:
Not quite right though. Kaupthing was known to be in enormous trouble well in advance. It was insolvent when the FSA moved on S&F.
Actually it wasn't insolvent. I have the Administrators' report here with balance sheet, P&L, the lot. Indeed, KSF was actually lending spare cash overnight to the Bank of England, including the night before the Administration order. At a time when all the UK banks were borrowing from the BoE, not lending.
DonkeyApple said:
The FSA only moved because it was told to by the Govt. also, it was already on the radar because of people like the Tzinguez brothers amongst others, as well as the Bauger chap.
You mean Tchenguiz and Baugur I presume, but also incorrect - indeed, the Tchenguiz brothers only popped up on the radar because of KSF going into Administration.
DonkeyApple said:
In the case of Santander, if you wait until the parent is bust then you would be too late of they intend on raiding the UK assets.
Nobody is suggesting waiting until the parent is bust. KSF was shut down before Kaupthing went bust; indeed the former caused the latter according to the Icelandics but the timeline is clear.

DonkeyApple said:
Hence the need to be talking to Santander UK and quite frankly monitoring some people's activities for tell tale signs.
Absoloutely, and the FSA's liquidity guys do exactly that (the talking) although the monitoring is of their daily liquidity position, not spying on people. It can of course also see the bank's balance at the BoE.
DonkeyApple said:
This is a taxpayer risk not a sub £85k client risk.
So, no reason to panic withdraw then.

DonkeyApple

55,479 posts

170 months

Monday 21st May 2012
quotequote all
munky said:
So, no reason to panic withdraw then.
Never said there was. Said anyone exposed should remove funds.

We knew Kaupthing was gone early doors. We also knew KSF was ring fenced.

Tzinguez situation at Kaupthing SF known in 2006. FSA monitoring due to Mitchell's and Butler holdings along with others. Also known the Tzinguez link to Icelandic parent and Bauger.

The fact remains that if the parent had chosen to drain non seg KSF funds they could have done. The FSA only prevented funds from moving because at that point the parent hadn't done so.

It was fire fighting by the FSA and only happening because the Govt instructed it. Back in 07/08 the FSA was still on holiday.

I remember exactly where I was when I was rushing to strip all client funds from KSF and 4 days later I was informed over dinner that RBS had gone. KAupthing went some time after that so we knew it was kaput and were racing to get non seg funds out. We also knew who the positional players were at KSF and that they had no assets to pay calls in the UK and also weren't able to cross positions out as no banks were taking this kind of book. We had offloaded these clients 24 months earlier due to credit risk.

RichyBoy

3,741 posts

218 months

Monday 21st May 2012
quotequote all
Jim Cramer Is Predicting Bank Runs In Spain And Italy And Financial Anarchy Throughout Europe

During an appearance on Meet The Press on Sunday, Jim Cramer of CNBC boldly predicted that "financial anarchy" is coming to Europe and that there will be "bank runs" in Spain and Italy in the next few weeks. This is very strong language for the most famous personality on the most watched financial news channel in the United States to be using. In fact, if Cramer is not careful, people will start accusing him of sounding just like The Economic Collapse Blog. It may not happen in "the next few weeks", but the truth is that the European banking system is in a massive amount of trouble and if Greece does leave the euro it is going to cause a tremendous loss of confidence in banks in countries such as Spain, Italy and Portugal. There are already rumors that the "smart money" is pulling out of Spanish and Italian banks. So could we see some of these banks collapse? Would they get bailed out if they do collapse? It is so hard to predict exactly how "financial anarchy" will play out, but it is becoming increasingly clear that the European financial system is heading for a massive amount of pain.

But what is Europe supposed to do? Even though "austerity measures" have been implemented in many eurozone nations, the truth is that they are all still running up more debt. Are European nations just supposed to run up massive amounts of debt indefinitely and pretend that there will never been any consequences?

That is apparently what Barack Obama wants. During the G-8 summit that just concluded, Obama urged European leaders to pursue a "pro-growth" path.

Of course to Obama a "pro-growth" economic plan includes spending trillions of dollars that you do not have without any regard for what you are doing to future generations.

Germany has been trying to get the rest of the eurozone to move much closer to living within their means, but as the recent elections in France and Greece demonstrated, much of the rest of the eurozone is not too thrilled with the end of debt-fueled prosperity.

In Greece, the recent elections failed to produce a new government, so new elections will be held on June 17th.

http://www.blacklistednews.com/Jim_Cramer_Is_Predi...

munky

5,328 posts

249 months

Tuesday 22nd May 2012
quotequote all
Lloyds was very safe, until Gordon and Badgerface dumped the bankrupt HBOS on them, and lied to shareholders about the size of the emergency loans to HBOS. Of course, I should have predicted that, right? wink

And yes, at the time of writing, Landsbanki was safer than a number of UK banks, notably Northern Rock, HBOS, Bradford & Bingley, Alliance & Leicester, RBS. It had a better funding and liquidity position, and unlike the UK banks mentioned, wasn't borrowing emergency funds. All that changed in the space of a week, not due to any parent company sucking away cash, but due to panicking depositors following a newspaper article, and the invocation of an anti-terrorist law to seize £6bn of deposits. The disappearance of £6bn of funding tends to have an adverse impact on a bank.

fido

16,820 posts

256 months

Tuesday 22nd May 2012
quotequote all
munky said:
Lloyds was very safe, until Gordon and Badgerface dumped the bankrupt HBOS on them, and lied to shareholders about the size of the emergency loans to HBOS. Of course, I should have predicted that, right? wink
So lemme get this right - desperate people in charge of bankrupt countries/companies can and will perform desperate acts .. ? Good thing Spain's economy and banking sector is all tickety-boo then wink

munky

5,328 posts

249 months

Tuesday 22nd May 2012
quotequote all
fido said:
munky said:
Lloyds was very safe, until Gordon and Badgerface dumped the bankrupt HBOS on them, and lied to shareholders about the size of the emergency loans to HBOS. Of course, I should have predicted that, right? wink
So lemme get this right - desperate people in charge of bankrupt countries/companies can and will perform desperate acts .. ? Good thing Spain's economy and banking sector is all tickety-boo then wink
No-one is disputing that Spain is a pile of poo. I'm arguing that Santander sucking cash out of the UK willy-nilly is not as easy as some people seem to think, and if it comes down to a choice of being fired for defying one's paella-munching boss or going to jail and being fired, most sane people would choose the former.

DonkeyApple

55,479 posts

170 months

Tuesday 22nd May 2012
quotequote all
munky said:
fido said:
munky said:
Lloyds was very safe, until Gordon and Badgerface dumped the bankrupt HBOS on them, and lied to shareholders about the size of the emergency loans to HBOS. Of course, I should have predicted that, right? wink
So lemme get this right - desperate people in charge of bankrupt countries/companies can and will perform desperate acts .. ? Good thing Spain's economy and banking sector is all tickety-boo then wink
No-one is disputing that Spain is a pile of poo. I'm arguing that Santander sucking cash out of the UK willy-nilly is not as easy as some people seem to think, and if it comes down to a choice of being fired for defying one's paella-munching boss or going to jail and being fired, most sane people would choose the former.
I think it is actually very easy if done with intent.

The UK retail money does not simply sit in the clients' accounts. Your account is simply a record of what they owe you, nothing else. That money is being sweated all day every day with only a small percentage being retained inside as part of the teir 1 capital adequacy.

So, every day the clients' money is sitting somewhere else, in another institution in another country, anywhere in the world.

If there were intent it is not unfeasible that Santander UK is the lender when Santander parent is the borrower which then defaults. wink

The point is that this would not be legal but it is doable. And the second point is to question Spain's track record re honesty and fair play towards the UK wink

The key is intent.

munky

5,328 posts

249 months

Tuesday 22nd May 2012
quotequote all
anonymous said:
[redacted]
I think Straumur still survives (although it was nationalised at one point) but it's not a retail bank. Glitnir was the shakiest, and as you said was the first to go and from that point, it was almost inevitable that the others would from contagion. And this is my point - if people collectively believe a bank will fail - even if it's rock solid - then it will fail, because of depositors taking out cash en masse. It's self-fulfilling. This is why Winky had to bail out the UK banks and guarantee everything in sight, because otherwise it all would have collapsed. The difference was, the icelandic banks were bigger than the country - they couldn't afford to bail out Glitnir; panic then spread assisted by the UK press and the "second coming of Christ" group of hedgies taking massive short positions. Until Glitnir, the others were fine - with funding and liquidity positions better than Barclays - until the bank runs changed all that. The bank run was electronic of course, there were no queues to show on TV as there were no physical branches in the UK.
It was ultimately bank runs that caused the failures of the bigger two, driven by panic. There were no losses, no 125% mortgages, no sub-prime loans. People pulling out their cash needlessly causes banks to fail, and then they say "oh aren't I lucky I pulled out my cash before they imploded" - when they caused it. It's not just retail depositors; indeed with KSF retail deposits were still net flowing in the week before they got shut down as depositors were taking cash out of NR, RBS etc as perceptions of riskiness changed almost daily, but corporate deposits were flowing out and a certain German bank pulled their credit line to KSF, even though it was collateralised, contributing to their demise. (A certain French bank meanwhile increased their credit line!). Because of that KSF shut down their CFD business, which is what got Tchenguiz into difficulty and caused all his shares to get dumped on the market.

So I dispute* your assertion that it makes sense to act on any sniff of trouble (*if someone's deposits are within the FSCS limit that is) - it won't hurt them to sit tight, but it will hurt others (companies, charities) not covered by FSCS if they all pull their cash out and cause it to fail. No bank is more than a week away from failure if they suffer a bank run. Just the fear of it happening causes it to happen - and yes, that fear can conceivably be created by one newspaper article. IMO.

munky

5,328 posts

249 months

Tuesday 22nd May 2012
quotequote all
DonkeyApple said:
munky said:
So, no reason to panic withdraw then.
Never said there was. Said anyone exposed should remove funds.

We knew Kaupthing was gone early doors. We also knew KSF was ring fenced.
Tzinguez situation at Kaupthing SF known in 2006. FSA monitoring due to Mitchell's and Butler holdings along with others. Also known the Tzinguez link to Icelandic parent and Bauger.
What do you think the "situation" was? I think you're mixing up Baugur with Exista.
Not sure why the FSA, especially given their lack of interest in just about everything back then, would be that interested in a bloke who had some shares (albeit a large number, via CFD) in a pub chain back in 2006 and why it would be called a "situation", other than the Exista connection. Got any news articles from that time? I don't recall any mention of it back in 2006, but then I wasn't following it back then. I also note that they had bigger, richer, higher profile clients with larger stakes in other companies, but there's little mention of that.
DonkeyApple said:
The fact remains that if the parent had chosen to drain non seg KSF funds they could have done. The FSA only prevented funds from moving because at that point the parent hadn't done so.
They hadn't done so because there was no need. Funds were going in the opposite direction - it was KSF that had a bank run, not the parent.
DonkeyApple said:
I remember exactly where I was when I was rushing to strip all client funds from KSF
So you caused it then, how dare you! wink

Ribol

11,318 posts

259 months

Tuesday 22nd May 2012
quotequote all
anonymous said:
[redacted]
Sorry to butt in Tonker, but the real question is who in their right mind would leave that sort of money "unprotected" in any bank today?

Mermaid

21,492 posts

172 months

Tuesday 22nd May 2012
quotequote all
Ribol said:
Sorry to butt in Tonker, but the real question is who in their right mind would leave that sort of money "unprotected" in any bank today?
Correct, it is a pain to open new banks accounts, but prudent not to keep more than £82k ( £164 joint) in any Bank or joint licence holders.

Ribol

11,318 posts

259 months

Tuesday 22nd May 2012
quotequote all
Mermaid said:
Ribol said:
Sorry to butt in Tonker, but the real question is who in their right mind would leave that sort of money "unprotected" in any bank today?
Correct, it is a pain to open new banks accounts, but prudent not to keep more than £82k ( £164 joint) in any Bank or joint licence holders.
I see what you did there wink

DonkeyApple

55,479 posts

170 months

Tuesday 22nd May 2012
quotequote all
munky said:
DonkeyApple said:
munky said:
So, no reason to panic withdraw then.
Never said there was. Said anyone exposed should remove funds.

We knew Kaupthing was gone early doors. We also knew KSF was ring fenced.
Tzinguez situation at Kaupthing SF known in 2006. FSA monitoring due to Mitchell's and Butler holdings along with others. Also known the Tzinguez link to Icelandic parent and Bauger.
What do you think the "situation" was? I think you're mixing up Baugur with Exista.
Not sure why the FSA, especially given their lack of interest in just about everything back then, would be that interested in a bloke who had some shares (albeit a large number, via CFD) in a pub chain back in 2006 and why it would be called a "situation", other than the Exista connection. Got any news articles from that time? I don't recall any mention of it back in 2006, but then I wasn't following it back then. I also note that they had bigger, richer, higher profile clients with larger stakes in other companies, but there's little mention of that.
DonkeyApple said:
The fact remains that if the parent had chosen to drain non seg KSF funds they could have done. The FSA only prevented funds from moving because at that point the parent hadn't done so.
They hadn't done so because there was no need. Funds were going in the opposite direction - it was KSF that had a bank run, not the parent.
DonkeyApple said:
I remember exactly where I was when I was rushing to strip all client funds from KSF
So you caused it then, how dare you! wink
The key is that the market was fully aware of the commercial property players who were borrowing from the parent. They knew what the properties were, what had been paid for them, the UK based assets of the borrowers and most importantly the current market value of the assets and the margin that was going to be required.

In addition, the equity market knew the leveraged equity positions these people had, what stocks they were in (again property plays based on companies which still owned their properties and hadn't doen a sale and leaseback and were in theory hugely under valued in the eyes of property speculators), the size of these positions, the margin requirements and where they were holding these positions. They also knew the balance sheet capacity of the broker and obviously could see the market value of the holdings. In addition, they also knew that nearly all client funds were elected up to non-seg and 100% at risk. And finally, that becuase the parent was in deep exposure over their commercial property lending to key people who would not be lent to by credible banks there would be no foundation for the brokerage to fall back upon.

I recall this reasonably well as I was right in the middle of it wink

dxg

8,229 posts

261 months

Tuesday 22nd May 2012
quotequote all
And so it begins.

At some point over the past few days, RBS have changed their online banking system so that you can't access those accounts that are heading to Santander without a 'new customer number.'

What is that new number? Anyone's guess.

Do you go to RBS or Santander with the problem? Anyone's guess.