17 September 2008
After AIG, the gaps continue to widen in the financial system
After five days of frantic efforts of banking authorities, breaches of the international financial system continued to grow Wednesday, with the emergence of new names on the list of establishments condemned in advance by the markets.
A few hours after the U.S. authorities had taken the historic decision to nationalize the insurer AIG and the British bank Barclays was announced the purchase for a morsel of bread of the best assets of Lehman Brothers, the British HBOS had to accept her redemption emergency.
The avalanche of new stock markets put on the nerves, despite the release of reserves by central banks.
"The turbulence caused by the financial crisis the USA are not about to stop," said Prime Minister South Korean Han Seung-soo, calling for calm local investors.
Wall Street lost nearly 3% in late morning, while exchanges should be suspended on the stock markets in Moscow, where the international crisis came to exacerbate concerns arising from the conflict in Georgia.
After resisted most of the day, the Bombay Stock Exchange craquait and fell below 4,000 points for the first time since May 2005. The London Stock Exchange lost 2.25 close%.
Long incarnation of the seriousness and solidity, the bank HBOS had to resign itself to be swallowed by its rival Lloyds TSB after seeing smoke soar to two-thirds of its market capitalization since the beginning of the year.
Other thunderclap: Barclays announced the acquisition of most of the U.S. operations of Lehman Brothers, the investment bank that has filed for bankruptcy Monday in front of the intransigence of the government.
A strategic coup incredible: for a price (250 million dollars) which would have been considered ridiculous there are only a few months, Barclays will make its subsidiary BarCap the third investment bank on Wall Street.
On the other side of the Atlantic, precisely, Wall Street came to live another historical episode.
The U.S. central bank, the Fed, which had remained inflexible Sunday at the difficulties of Lehman Brothers, made Tuesday turned 180 degrees in assisting unprecedented 85 billion dollars to the insurer AIG to avoid a global financial crisis .
The Federal Reserve has committed to lend itself are necessary for AIG, while the former number one global insurance no longer than a few hours before having to file for bankruptcy, which could cause according to analysts a chain reaction with incalculable consequences.
For Elie Cohen, director of research at CNRS, "this rescue is both bad news because it means that the crisis develops, but it is also good news because it means that the government sits on his convictions to avoid systemic crisis. "
According to the daily New York Post, U.S. authorities would now put to find a buyer for Washington Mutual, the largest bank in Seattle, which croûle under the importance of its outstanding property. The title, beaten for weeks, yet ceded nearly 9%, shortly before 16H00 GMT.
Following the elimination of three of the five investment banks on Wall Street - Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch, married Sunday at hussar to Bank of America - the speculation turned to the number two in the sector: Morgan Stanley. The action was losing 33%, even though the bank has issued the previous day in advance, an excellent quarterly profit of 1.42 billion dollars, just wave compared to that of a year ago.
by erectusplus at 19:18:00 |
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