So where does the substance of the AIB announcement leave us? As has often been the case with the government’s approach to the banking crisis, this pushes us one step closer to some kind of resolution, while still maintaining lots of uncertainty as to what that resolution will look like.
I’ll write a bit more later on the substance of the announcements today from AIB and the Department of Finance. However, I thought I’d first discuss an aspect of today’s developments that hasn’t been discussed in most of the press reports. Together with the Minister for Finance (with whom they have good reason not to disagree) AIB have “formed a view” that they need to have an extra €1.5 billion in Tier 1 capital.
Those who followed AIB and BOI’s fruitless attempts to raise equity in recent months were probably surprised to hear that rather than just announce that AIB was taking an extra €1.5 billion from the government, the bank stated that it was planning to raise these funds itself. Most media stories have focused on how AIB can achieve this by selling its minority stake in M&T, an American bank, and perhaps also selling its stake in a Polish bank.
Now here’s where it gets tricky. RTE and other media outlets have reported this as a simple story of “bank short of funds raises funds by selling assets.” The problem is folks, that plausible as this may sound, that’s not the story at all.
I linked last weekend to former Swedish Finance Minister’s Bo Lundgren’s appearance on the Marian Finucane show.
Lundgren also appeared recently before the TARP Congressional Oversight Committee, chaired by Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren and his written testimony was the basis for the section on Sweden in the committee’s latest report. Here’s a webpage containing the written testimony of Lundgren and three other experts on other banking crises (Great Depression, 1980s S&L and 1990’s Japan) who all appeared before the committee at the same time.
The webpage also has full video of this meeting. The experts delivered short verbal testimony (Lundgren’s starts about 14 minutes in) and about 40 minutes in there is a question and answer session. Prof. Warren’s opening line of questioning about arguments against nationalisation was of particular interest to yours truly but the whole session is really useful.
[Last in Series …. For Now]
Speaking with Myles Dungan on RTE radio on Thursday, Minister Eamon Ryan put forward the following argument against nationalisation:
You have to run the whole bank, the system, from Merrion Street … And there’s no ability, I believe, in the Department of Finance to run six banks at the one time … They [the Department of Finance] recognise that you don’t just suddenly start running six banks. And you can’t do it in a very transparent way.
I think the Minister raises a fair concern here, so I thought I’d throw this one out there as my final (for now) post on this.
Peter Bacon’s final argument against nationalisation in his Morning Ireland interview was the following:
Also, if you nationalise the bank, it’s gone. If the bank remains there, even if it comes to pass that in some cases there is majority ownership by the government, by the taxpayer, there will be a quotation on the Irish and London stock exchanges. There will be a price every day that bank shares will trade at and that will provide taxpayers with an exit mechanism out of their ownership of the banks in due course.