Tag Archives: SNS

Today another example of failing greed has become apparent. The Dutch SNS bank has been nationalised to avoid a large bank from going bankrupt and delivering millions into utter despair. It had been some time in the workings, and to be honest, they had been trying to find new investors, new finances and solutions. This solution is not what the bank wanted and not what the governments wanted, but they told us that they had no choice. There was an interested party; however they would only want to buy the bank, and not the bad sides. So they were willing to buy the cream and dump the milk.

The consequence would have been sizeable. Now the bill is close to 5 billion Euro, making the bill 220 Euro per citizen. In addition the not profit making real estate branch is placed into a bad bank that side had to be guaranteed by the government for an additional 5 billion Euro (Source: NOS). The people with investments like bonds and shares lose it all, they lost all investments. This is a unique event. I can definitely agree with the Finance minister stating that it is ridiculous that a good investment makes money, whilst a bad investment is still covered. To me this is like gambling with 0 risk. The Dutch Finance minister stated that the financial industry must accept ad deal with its own losses. Those losses are set to a total of almost 1.25 billion Euro. We can all agree that this invoice adds up to a massive amount of money. These issues do have one emerging issue. As this has never happened before, it might end up in lengthy trials, tribulations and litigations.

There is an historical side to this. This bank was founded in the early 30’s. It was a simple labourer’s bank for savings and mortgages. It was all working fine. When the bank goes public in 2006, things change fast. Through this step they obtain 1.5 billion Euro in funds. They enter a field of high risk property investments. After the 2008 crash they get an injection of an amount approaching 750 million Euro. So we are looking at a bank, who was allowed to proceed to play Las Vegas style Craps with billions and they are now a non-party. A small group of people had thrown it all away in a little over 5 years. They wasted over a billion a year and no one with authority, insight or even common sense stopped any of this. And this is just one bank! (Source of most of these numbers: NOS).

The question becomes was this bank fattened as a pig, to be handed as a roast? After an era of bad banking, of inflated accreditation and as we saw the plunge of 2008 all over the US and other places, why were these dangerous environments not handled by the respective local governments? To give an additional view, the Dutch government had deposited 34 billion into Dutch banks nationalizing those 3 banks. 11 billion has been recovered (as in paid back), yet 23 billion is still to be recovered. So this is over 1000 Euro per citizen. This is not including the bad bank side which has billions in bad property choices (read investments). This part has places all over Europe that no one seems to want to buy. I wrote about this earlier. Those exclusive places that only 0.1% could afford, and those people do not want to be close to one another.

The issues of SNS Reaal were described as a stacking of blunders and mismanagement. This is not the first but the third bank that had to be saved using taxpayers money. This should lead to overwhelming questions as to WHY there is such reluctance to keep a better watch on this group of people. The UK has its own demons on this field, the Lloyd banking group to name but one.

The Huffington Post UK Charlie Thomas wrote: “The chairmen of five of the high street’s biggest banks today appealed to their industry to accept their wrongdoing and continue work to rebuild a sense of trust with the public.”
That does not even sound funny. That thought has two massive issues.

1. The issue at hand is more then not distorted, and there is NO clear message at all where the mistake were made, what corrections are made and how it will be prevented in future. That entire operation is a story of unclear messages. There seems to be no clear person to hold accountable (not as in blaming, but as in cleaning it up). Charlie Thomas also quoted Sir Philip Hampton, chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland group, quoting: “At the core of our bank, there’s never been anything wrong with it – we did lots of stupid things, but once we’ve rectified those silly things we’ll be in a good position.”
Well from that point Sir Thomas I would like to point out that these bungles are too often greed driven and as such a no-one-to-blame policy sounds very grown up, yet the driving spears of those star chambers remain untouchable and oversight is in my humble opinion one of the few remaining options.

2. Over the last few years these banks, namely the banks in the EEC messed up (or let’s just call it plainly mismanaged) for an amount of many billions of dollars. How long can we allow for back-door dealings between governments and banks? How long until these levels of mismanagement are translated into complete confiscation of goods and owning from those in charge and then if debt remains added long term prison sentences? The UK used to hang people for highway robbery. Those of lesser crimes, like stealing bread, would find themselves on a paid holiday trip to penitential Australia (now a major Commonwealth nation far from the UK). So what are these banks doing? Should it be seen as nothing less than highway robbery, or was it a massive heist? The simple heist of all bread from all the people?

Now, I will admit, that at present, I seem to be no better than others. However, this is only part 1. In my next blog, in part 2 of this blog, I will look at possible solutions. What can we do? I would especially like to look at the options, currently within the bad bank called the Property ranch of the SNS Bank. What could be done to limit the damage?