Support of Anglo Irish Bank Strains Ireland
DUBLIN — Can one bank bring down a country?
Anglo Irish Bank, the midsize Irish lender whose profligacy has come to symbolize the excesses of the real estate bubble here, is doing its best to find out.
No other country aside from Iceland suffered a banking bust as severe as Ireland’s during the financial crisis. Ireland was also the country that took the most direct route in tackling the problem, by recognizing upfront the bad loans of its devastated banks and transferring them to government ledgers.
Both the United States and Britain avoided such a move by taking stakes in their troubled banks and, in the case of Britain, insuring their worst-performing loans.
Now the Irish government’s strategy is being called into question as its credit rating suffers and its borrowing costs resume their upward trajectory. Ireland’s struggle to cope with its mounting bank losses could well be a harbinger for other parts of Europe and for the United States as stuttering economic growth and stagnant housing markets put further strain on bank balance sheets.
Anglo Irish, which on Tuesday reported a first-half loss of 8.2 billion euros ($10.4 billion) also said the government had injected an additional 8 billion euros ($10.16 billion) into the bank, bringing total aid so far to 22 billion euros.
Mike Aynsley, the bank’s chief executive, said Tuesday that he expected the government’s total investment in the bank to be about 25 billion euros ($31.75 billion). He added that commercial property, the bank’s core lending market, which is already down 60 percent, had not yet reached bottom.
“Anytime you see a correction like that, you will see carnage,” he said. “But we think that the 25 billion euros will be largely sufficient.”
Nach den schlechten Zahlen und der damit einhergehenden Presse verlor der Anleihenkurs wieder auf aktuell 46%. Sobald jedoch nach der EU-Entscheidung feststeht, welcher Weg seitens der irischen Regierung eingeschlagen wird, dürfte Bewegung in die LT2-Anleihen kommen. Am interessantesten wird sein, in welchem Unternehmen oder Abwicklungs-Vehikel die LT2-Anleihen landen und ob und in welchem Zeitraum eine Abwicklung geplant ist.
