New York | Although Lehman Brothers collapsed more than three years ago, its full dissolution depended on settling creditors’ claims worth around $450 billion. On Tuesday, a federal judge paved the way for the now infamous firm to exit Chapter 11 protection. The final phase of the largest and most complex biggest bankruptcy in US history –as the firm defined it– that tipped world economies into chaos, involving 7,000 legal…
Mariano Aldama of the Royal Bank of Scotland and responsible for capital market origination for financial institutions in Spain and Portugal, has given an interview to the business daily Cinco Días in which he admits that, despite the critical situation of Spain because of excessive financing costs, it is possible to restore market confidence. We offer an excerpt of the interview. How long can the banking system resist without financing itself? The rejection in the markets can not last much longer but first there are pieces of the puzzle that…
By Jacobo de Regoyos, in Brussels | The financial roulette russe has become a variable-geometry argument that serves both to justify an intergovernmental Europe and a federal Europe at the same time. Among the latter, we’d find most of EU officials, especially the president of the European Commission Durao Barroso, who believes that the EU must complete its monetary union with a real economic union. Yet, Barroso opposes the Franco-German…
Doom: “With the turmoil threatening to spiral into financial meltdown as the value of banks' sovereign bond holdings slide, Merkel and Sarkozy are likely to discuss in Berlin both how to manage Greece, prevent contagion and strengthen lenders.” Gloom: “German Chancellor Angela Merkel will meet French President Nicolas Sarkozy amid signs that some European banks are feeling the strain of the lingering debt crisis which has pushed Greece to the brink…
Doom: “With the turmoil threatening to spiral into financial meltdown as the value of banks' sovereign bond holdings slide, Merkel and Sarkozy are likely to discuss in Berlin both how to manage Greece, prevent contagion and strengthen lenders.” Gloom: “German Chancellor Angela Merkel will meet French President Nicolas Sarkozy amid signs that some European banks are feeling the strain of the lingering debt crisis which has pushed Greece to the brink…
NEW YORK- After months of protracted negotiations over the national debt ceiling that brought the US to the brink of default and given the fact that the economy is weakening, Americans are running out of patience with political leaders, according to a Bloomberg National Poll released on Wednesday. 72 per cent say the country is on the wrong track. A majority says it will take at least six more years…