La ricapitalizzazione di Allied Irish porta anche la prima banca del paese sotto il controllo statale, secondo le conclusioni cui (correttamente, IMHO) perviene il NYT.
Anche gli irlandesi si avviano a fare "all in" sul sistema bancario...
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/01/business/global/01euro.html?src=mv
Ireland Takes Over 2nd Bank as Bailout Bill Rises
By LANDON THOMAS Jr.
Published: September 30, 2010
LONDON — In a sweeping action meant to regain the confidence of jittery investors, the Irish government said Thursday that it expected to inject billions more euros into two of its largest banks, underscoring the extent to which they continued to jeopardize the country’s fiscal condition.
Brian Lenihan, the Irish finance minister, said that Allied Irish Bank — once the biggest in the country — would come under government control as a result of a state-guaranteed share offering worth €5 billion, or about $6.8 billion. The bank had been trying to raise capital by selling assets, but Mr. Lenihan said the current market conditions would not allow for a private transaction.
The government also confirmed market expectations that under a worst case scenario, its financial commitment to a smaller bank that it already owns, Anglo Irish, could reach €35 billion. This figure equals an earlier forecast by
Standard & Poor’s, one that at the time was questioned by government officials. Some Irish analysts said that the ultimate bill for Anglo could be even higher than that.
Under a best-case scenario, the government would see its cost for bailing out Anglo Irish rise to €29 billion, officials said.
For weeks the Irish government, the first in Europe to impose a harsh austerity regime, has been assailed by opposition parties as well as international investors for failing to admit that the cost of bailing out the country’s stricken banks was going to be significantly higher than official estimates.
As a result, the yields on benchmark 10-year bonds have soared to a recent high of 6.8 percent, causing concern that Ireland may be the first to be forced to tap Europe’s €440 billion rescue fund.
The government has insisted strongly that it has no such plans to do so, arguing that it has raised enough money from the bond market to give it sufficient cash to last until the second quarter of next year. On Thursday, Ireland canceled bond auctions scheduled for October and November — sure to have been at elevated rates — and said it would return to the markets next year.
Anglo Irish and Allied Irish, along with most other Irish banks, indulged in a lending spree of historic proportions over the past decade, funding a property boom that went bust in 2007, with the market showing no sign of recovering.
The government guaranteed all banking liabilities, including the senior and junior debt of the banks, a decision that has fed a slow burn of anger in Ireland among the many who feel that bondholders, as well as Irish taxpayers, should pay the bill for the bank’s excesses.
On Thursday, Mr. Lenihan said for the first time that junior bond holders in Anglo Irish would be expected to make a “significant contribution to meeting the costs of Anglo.”
However, in an interview with the Irish national broadcaster RTE, he said the state was leery of scaring markets by defaulting on Anglo’s senior debt, which takes priority over other creditors for being repaid in the event of a bankruptcy.
“We have to get bondholders from overseas to fund the Irish state and to fund the substantial deficit,” he said. “You can’t go to your bank manager and say, ‘I want to default,’ and at the same time, ‘I want more loans.’ If that’s the underlying message coming out of Ireland, we’re not going to flourish as a country.”
The cost of bailing out Ireland’s banks is now likely to approach 30 percent of the country’s economic output — by far the biggest banking bill, outside of Iceland, that a major economy has had to pay as a result of the
financial crisis.
The Irish announcement came coincidentally with the downgrade of the Spanish economy by the ratings agency
Moody’s, an action that, along with the Irish steps, had been widely expected by the market. Both Standard & Poor’s and
Fitch have already cut their ratings on Spain, especially as the ongoing stagnation of the Spanish economy is likely to make it even more difficult for the government there to bring its deficit down to 6 percent next year.
In fact, it is this struggle for the economy to recover that still worries some analysts, who caution that the bill may well rise some more.
“They are getting there, but I still think that the embedded losses in Anglo Irish are €40 billion,” said Peter Mathews, an independent banking consultant based in Dublin. “They have not fully addressed areas like mortgage lending and loans to small businesses.”
In a statement, Mr. Lenihan conceded that the bank bailout would have an immediate and dire effect on Ireland’s budget deficit, pushing it up to an extraordinary 32 percent of G.D.P. Taking out the bank costs, Ireland’s deficit is expected to be around 11 percent, despite two years of an austerity drive.
The inability of the government to get full control of its public finances is likely to remain an acute point of concern for investors, especially now that the government says it will not be raising funds in the market over the next two months.
“We have spent two years cutting deficits and we still do not have things under control,” said Constantin Gurdgiev, a professor of finance at Trinity College in Dublin. “We already have a solvency crisis. Now we are setting ourselves up for a liquidity crisis.”
