Thursday, October 9th, 2008
The Chancellor yesterday morning announce his £500bn banks bailout plan which will see some of the banks part-nationalised. The plan consists of the following:
- At least £200bn for short-term lending to banks to replace funds they normally borrow through the inter-bank market.
- £25bn recapitalisation facility for Abbey, Barclays, HBOS, HSBC, Lloyds TSB, Nationwide, Royal Bank of Scotland and Standard Chartered to boost their balance sheet. However, Abbey, HSBC and Standard Chartered have already declined the offer.
- £25bn top-up fund if the first capitalisation proves inadequate.
- £250bn government guarantee of bank bond issues - again to help shore up the banks’ strained balance sheets.
Click here for more information.
Tags: Abbey, bailout plan, Barclays, Government bailout, HBOS, HSBC, Lloyds TSB, Nationwide, part-nationalisation, RBS, Royal Bank of Scotland, Standard Chartered, £500 billion
Posted in Abbey, Banking, Credit crisis, Credit crunch, Finance, Government, HSBC, Halifax, Lloyds TSB, Nationwide, Politics | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 15th, 2008
A fraudster posing as chairman of Barclays (Marcus Agius), tricked his own bank’s credit card arm into issuing a new card before taking £10,000 cash from his account. The new card was wrongly issued after a caller gave card operator Barclaycard some of Agius’s personal details, but staff also failed to follow security guidelines in asking for more information. Like any customer, the chairman later had the money refunded to his account. For the past few months, officials have been blamed for several high-profile losses of personal data held by the government, most notably the loss of two discs containing personal details of 25 million Britons; more than a third of the population. Read Martin Lewis’ article on how to protect yourself, what to look out for and what to do if you think your ID has already been stolen.
Tags: Barclaycard, Barclays, Barclays boss, fraudters, Marcus Agius, martin lewis
Posted in Banking, Credit cards | No Comments »
