[quote=“BenShermin”]Personally at the moment I’d wouldn’t buy shares in banking companies, I still feel Ireland’s economy is very un-stable and banks are unwilling to dish out loans credit the way they used to only two years ago. Property prices are falling and no amount of talk from Tom Parlon would give me the convidence to invest in property, many property investors are being left with empty houses and having to pay for furnishings themselves just to sell the house, thus pushing the prices down even more, in theory a 300,000 house is only costing the buyer 250,000 if there’s 50K worth of furnishings thrown in. All this has to mean less bank customers and less profit over this year.
As well as that, the whole situation with the run-away solicitor Michael Lynn and the Irish banks not formally reporting the loss of 90M owed to them by the solicitor makes me wonder is there something the banks are covering up! I know if a customer owed my business few million I’d be reporting it wether my business was worth 100 or 100million, it wouldn’t matter, I’d want my money. The fact that the banks as money grabbing greed centres who charge riddiculous intrest don’t want to get their money back seems very fishy to me.[/quote]
genius
stick this on the front page bandage with the date beside it
[quote=“Appendage;27490][QUOTE=BenShermin”]Personally at the moment I’d wouldn’t buy shares in banking companies, I still feel Ireland’s economy is very un-stable and banks are unwilling to dish out loans credit the way they used to only two years ago. Property prices are falling and no amount of talk from Tom Parlon would give me the convidence to invest in property, many property investors are being left with empty houses and having to pay for furnishings themselves just to sell the house, thus pushing the prices down even more, in theory a 300,000 house is only costing the buyer 250,000 if there’s 50K worth of furnishings thrown in. All this has to mean less bank customers and less profit over this year.
QUOTE]
And another thing - I think it is quite a good time to be a property investor, as opposed to a property speculator. My aquiantances in the real estate industry tell me that many sellers are willing to accept much below the advertised price for their property as they need to sell. This leaves the power with the buyers, with them basically able to name their price. Combined with generally rising rents mean that as a long term investment property is still a reasonable punt.
The major problem in Ireland has been the ridiculous growth in property prices, this has spawned a generation of speculators who have bought houses with a view to selling them on completion. Hardly a healthy phenomenom. Many people have made a killing at this but clearly it was unsustainable. Hence the empty houses. Speculated bought with a view to twisting but buyers are getting wise to this and are more selective.
I couldn’t be bothered typing anymore, basically Ben you haven’t a clue about the property market.[/quote]
Not to nitpick on particular points, but I hope Appendage doesnt offer investment advice in his current role.
Agreed.
they are either going to be nationalised or they are going to go back up in the long term.
There is always serious money to be made during a recession assuming you have cash sitting around.
Years ago I would be jumping in and out of Elan but that was reckless.
Then I was off into exploration penny stocks.
Having the sac to invest in the banks at the moment is tough though.
You’d need balls to throw money into them now and if you did there’s a good chance you’d make a killing. But if you’re happy to take the risk in banks you’ll likely take a punt at other such risky opportunities and you’ll get burnt badly at some stage.
So widespread redundancies expected at Ulster Bank/First Active this morning. It was unnecessary having the two of them in competition anyway so this is a pragmatic enough rationalisation. Wonder if it will start a trend though.
60 branches closing. Wouldnt be surprised to see the same happening now with ACC and Rabobank. Are EBS involved with AIB somehow? ICS are part of BOI I think as well.
750 Jobs to go at Ulster Bank by the looks of things:
The Ulster Bank Group has confirmed plans to shed around 750 jobs as part of a major restructuring programme.
The Group says it plans to merge First Active and Ulster Bank under one brand in an effort to cut costs.
Forty-five First Active branches across the country will be closed as part of the move and customers will be transferred to the local Ulster Bank branch.
Another 15 First Active branches will be renamed under the Ulster Bank brand.
The Ulster Bank Group says the restructuring will result in 550 redundancies in the Republic and another 200 in the North, but the majority will be voluntary.
The company says the lay-offs are necessary to enable it to adapt to prevailing market conditions.
SIPTU and the Irish Bank Officials Association are understood to have been briefed on the plans this morning, with more meetings scheduled for the coming days.
Monday, 26 January 2009 09:18
Ulster Bank is looking to secure 750 voluntary redundancies.
550 jobs are to go at its operations here and a further 200 at Ulster Bank
in Northern Ireland.
First Active is to merge with Ulster Bank, leading to the closure of dozens
of branches.
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The First Active brand is set to disappear.
The two main unions involved, SIPTU and the Irish Bank Officials’
Association, have been hearing about the job losses this morning.
Ulster Bank Group, a subsidiary of Royal Bank of Scotland, employs 7,000
people in both the Republic and in Northern Ireland.
First Active has 60 branches in Dublin and the larger towns and cities,
employing more than 400 people.
There is also a nationwide network of Ulster Bank branches, which was a good
idea in the boom when lenders aggressively sought to build their loan books,
but it is of little value in a recession.
In areas with both a First Active and and Ulster Bank, one of the branches
will close.
First Active customers will be transferred to Ulster Bank.
These will be the first substantial job losses in the retail banking sector
arising from the global recession and the bursting of the property bubble
Yeah they’ll let Ulster Bank take the risky first step and then they’ll all pile in behind citing the economic climate for whatever the fuck they want.
The summer of 2004 was a good one for Fred Goodwin. Four years into his
time at the helm of Royal Bank of Scotland, it’s fair to say he’d made his
mark: top of the Scottish Power 100, incumbent European Banker of the
Year, and to cap it all, a knighthood at just 45. Amid all the fawning
adulation, Sir Fred probably failed to notice the lone, cautionary voice
of the anonymous banker who warned in the Observer: “He will go on, unless
something goes wrong - in which case I can’t see many people jumping to
his defence.” Something did go wrong, of course, in the form of the worst
financial crisis in decades; and Goodwin’s defenders are indeed few and
far between as he gets used to his latest accolade: FT Alphaville’s
World’s Worst Banker Award, 2008.
Goodwin will writhe, as one friend said last week, at being labelled “some
sort of inept banker” - after all, this is still the same man whose
formidable business brain saw him turn RBS from a second-rate regional
concern into an international superpower, spreading from China to the
American Midwest. But he’d be the first to admit-now watching from the
sidelines after an ignominious departure in October-that the numbers don’t
look good. A stunning plunge in value last week saw RBS shares trading at
just 10 pence-a fall of 98 per cent from their 2007 peak-and with nearly
three quarters of the company now in the hands of the state, commentators
have begun to write off RBS as “not a bank, but a former bank.” Pumped up
by his throbbing ambition, they say, Goodwin’s business model was a bubble
that was bound to burst, leaving his firm grossly overextended when the
credit crunch moved into its semi-apocalyptic post-Lehman phase. And with
all the nation looking for a banking scapegoat as Britain sinks into
recession, who better than “Fred the Shred” - with his irritating
baby-face, his twin Ferraris, and the intimidating air of menace that led
one RBS executive to whine: “You sense that he could tear you limb from
limb, and you are ever so grateful when he doesn’t.”
Goodwin might have fared better had he retained a little more of the
down-to-earth, Presbyterian values of his childhood in Paisley, where he
was born in 1958. His law course at Glasgow saw him become the first
member of his family to go to university, and he put his education to use
as he rose up the financial ladder - first as an accountant, and later at
Clydesdale Bank, where he became chief executive at the tender age of 37.
It was there that he earned his famous nickname, “shredding” employees in
their scores in a tireless drive for greater profitability.
It may not have endeared him to his ex-employees, but Goodwin’s ruthless
efficiency soon got him noticed at RBS’s Edinburgh headquarters. Two years
after his 1998 arrival, Goodwin masterminded the biggest deal in British
banking history: RBS’s 23.5bn hostile takeover of the troubled National
Westminster Bank. This was a stunningly audacious move, something akin to
a buy-out of Manchester United by Wigan, or an invasion of China by South
Korea. NatWest was three times the size of RBS, and no hostile takeover of
a major European bank had ever before been successful. But thanks to
Goodwin, RBS pulled off one of the deals of the century, entering the
banking major league at a stroke. Named chief executive in 2001, Goodwin
basked in ever-growing profits and shareholder acclaim.
NatWest had barely been digested before Goodwin became hungry for more.
His aggressive attitude spilled over into his statements to the press -
early in his reign he caused a stir as he discussed possible “mercy
killings” of weaker rivals. And he wasted no time in embarking on an
aggressive acquisitions strategy, snapping up Churchill Car Insurance and
the Irish mortgage provider First Active within his first year in charge.
Even a humiliating mugging at one of his own cashpoints failed to dent
Goodwin’s swaggering enthusiasm, as he looked to expand RBS’s
international presence with a number of deals in the United States. By
2003, he was Forbes’ Global Businessman of the Year.
The year of his knighthood might have felt great at the time; but in
retrospect Goodwin will be wondering whether that was where things started
to go wrong. The $10.5bn takeover of Charter One Financial made RBS the
seventh biggest bank in America, but the price was widely considered too
high. And when the following year saw Goodwin buy a five per cent stake in
Bank of China, a top analyst warned that many saw Goodwin as “a
megalomaniac who cares more about size than shareholder value.” A
chastened Goodwin finally promised to put a stop to the big acquisitions.
His ego was coming under threat from other quarters, as well. The
construction of a vast new headquarters outside Edinburgh saw the Sunday
Times run a series of stories that alleged, among other claims, that
Goodwin had ordered the construction of a special kitchen for preparing
scallops close to his office. An abortive libel action betrayed Goodwin’s
tendency to take himself unusually seriously - a trait well known to those
familiar with the executive meetings known as “morning prayers,” and
Goodwin’s “five-second rule,” which dictated that his first response to a
given situation was nearly always right.
This self-belief, ultimately, was Goodwin’s undoing. In 2007, he put his
gut instinct above his promise to his shareholders in launching a vast bid
for the Dutch bank ABN Amro - right at the peak of the market. RBS was
already using a dangerously small amount of capital to finance a large
amount of lending. With ABN Amro now on board, the RBS group had acquired
a huge level of exposure to the US subprime loan market, just in time for
its disastrous collapse.
RBS’s fortunes duly plummeted - but Goodwin didn’t go down without a
fight, carrying out Britain’s biggest ever rights issue to raise new funds
in April, even as shareholders were calling for his head. While RBS
lurched into a new level of crisis in October, his confrontational spirit
was still in full evidence as he said of the first government bail-out
package: “You know, it’s more a drive-by shooting than a negotiation.” But
the writing was on the wall, and within days Goodwin was out of a job,
with nothing but an 8.4 million pension pot to console him. Still,
there’s always those awards to look forward to.