Tucked away in the EC’s press release on aid for Irish banks, we find this little gem:
Anglo Irish Bank will furthermore receive a guarantee covering certain off-balance sheet liabilities (derivatives, clearing transactions and transactional arrangements) that will ensure that Anglo Irish Bank can continue its daily activities as a going concern.
There’s nothing here that tells us quite how big these newly-disclosed liabilities might be. AIB Anglo’s EUR70Bn on-balance sheet liabilities might provide some sort of calibration point, though. Half as much again, for the off-balance sheet stuff, if you were feeling gloomy? One hopes it will be much less than that, but it’s possible, and perhaps the EU will quell speculation by releasing the figure.
Secondly, note that the EC hasn’t quite made its mind up whether Allied Irish Bank (not Anglo; the other one) will turn out to have been worth helping:
With regard to Allied Irish Bank, the final decision will depend on the Commission being satisfied that the bank will be commercially viable in the long term without further injections of taxpayers’ money, that there is a significant contribution by the bank’s shareholders and subordinated debt holders to the restructuring costs and that the bank will reduce its activities to offset the distortion of competition caused by the aid.
Lastly, given the continued run of belated confessions from Irish banks, my complacent response, some while back, to commenter Hubert’s mild enquiry about whether we had seen the last of the losses from DEPFA, the specialist German lender that funds Irish government infrastructure development, is beginning to bug me.
*Update* to fix Anglo/AIB knucklechewer, and a hat-tip to @LorcanRK for the bomb detection.
No comments:
Post a Comment