Banks Display Renewed Appetite for Europe’s Pigs
Monday, September 6, 2010 7:44Banks increased their exposure to struggling eurozone nations to $2600 billion in the fist quarter of the year, in spite of the worries over sovereign debt in the area.
According to figures to be published by the Bank for International Settlements, foreign bank loans and other commitments to Portugal, the Republic of Ireland, Greece and Spain, which are the so-called Pigs, rose by 4.3% or $109bn, in January-March.
UK banks sharply increased their activities in Ireland, Portugal and Spain. British institutions are particularly heavily exposed to Ireland, with $222bn of loans and other commitments, which was up by $12bn in the quarter and more than lenders of any other nationality tracked by the BIS.
On the other hand, Ireland is struggling with the continued aftershocks of its banking and property collapse.
In Tokyo, the stock and currency markets swung widly as the government and central bank attempted to throw together emergency plans to revive the nation’s economy, defeat deflation and peg back the Japanese yen.
UK’s biggest supermarket group—Tesco secretly purchased a town centre via a front company and let it become essentially derelict in an approach to secure a landmark regeneration deal.
Consumer confidence has been in constant decline for the last five months, and a further fall would have made a double-dip recession seem a very real prospect. However, a new survey suggested that the consumer confidence in the UK economy improved in August for the first time in five months. In spite of the possibility of a double-dip recession, people’s perception of both their own finances for the coming year and the general economy had improved. It is said that the government will undoubtedly read these figures with a great deal of relief. The Consumer Confidence Index increased by 4 point to -18. But economists warned that the level of spending were not likely to grow at a similar rate as austerity measures laid out in the June Budget kick in.



