In a scathing interview with The Times yesterday Lord Myners', Gordon Brown's City Minister, states that the UK's banks almost collapsed last October:
“We were very close on Friday, October 10. There were two or three hours when
things felt very bad, nervous and fragile. Major depositors were trying to
withdraw — and willing to pay penalties for early withdrawal — from a number
of large banks.”
Mind you, we all know that Britain's banks are insolvent now anyway, so what's the problem?
Royal Bank of Scotland's analysts, 17th January 2009: "the
domestic UK banks are technically insolvent on a fully marked-to-market basis."
Not bad considering they paid £650 million ($1 billion) in auditors fees since 2000.
Chris M Skinner
Chris Skinner is best known as an independent commentator on the financial markets through his blog, TheFinanser.com, as author of the bestselling book Digital Bank, and Chair of the European networking forum the Financial Services Club. He has been voted one of the most influential people in banking by The Financial Brand (as well as one of the best blogs), a FinTech Titan (Next Bank), one of the Fintech Leaders you need to follow (City AM, Deluxe and Jax Finance), as well as one of the Top 40 most influential people in financial technology by the Wall Street Journal's Financial News. To learn more click here...