Sunday, May 17, 2009
West Bromwich Building Society not in trouble.
BBC: West Bromwich denies rescue talks
West Bromwich Building Society has denied reports that it is on the verge of collapse.
Posted by devo @ 05:32 PM (1254 views) Add Comment
9 Comments
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1. crunchy said...
Making the same noises as Northern Rock did.
This time the queue starts at the west side.
Green roots instead of shoots, me thinks.
2. Little Professor said...
Dec 2008:
"The society also remains hugely exposed to buy-to-let property. More than half of its loan book is buy-to-let after it acquired a series of multi-million pound mortgage portfolios from GMAC RFC, a company that specialised in sourcing home loans and selling them on to other lenders."
It was the acquisition of hundreds of millions of GMAC toxic loans (made to people who had no chance of ever paying them back) that drove NR and B&B to the wall.
Also, they've been gearing up to use dodgy accounting practices ahead of announcing their year-end results:
"It is also understood that West Bromwich is to admit to using conduits — secret multi-million-pound off-shore, off-the-books financing vehicles — and that it will include them in its balance sheet when it produces its annual report in May.
At least one of the conduits used by West Bromwich, which has approximately Ł10 billion of assets, was set up by beleaguered US investment bank Citigroup. Conduits are best known for being used by failed lenders such as HBOS."
3. crunchy said...
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/saving-and-banking/article.html?in_article_id=485388&in_page_id=7
More green shoots.
4. crunchy said...
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=482796&in_page_id=2
The strong arm of the FSA for those that may have missed it. Is it any wonder we now have THIS?
5. peeping tom said...
Another one bites the dust ... hardly surprising given how heavily it go into buy-to-let; oh, and the Baggies have just been relegated today
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/eng_prem/8038300.stm
Not a good day for West Bromwich.
6. peeping tom said...
To add to the above post, have a view of this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7645055.stm
The chief executive of West Bromwich Building Society, Stephen Karle, has spoken about the future of the company, BBC Midlands Today, 30 September 2008.
When I watched this everything about his body language reminded me of Jack Straw telling us what a great idea it was to invade Iraq.
7. hpwatcher said...
what they really need are savers, not borrowers........
a point completely wasted on this sh*t government & country
8. peeping tom said...
Yes, but it is from charging interest on loans that they make their money. Building societies can only give a decent return to savers if they are getting a better return from borrowers.
9. jack c said...
The West Brom BS denial that it doesnt have a problem has (IMO) as much credibilty as west Brom football club denying it has today been relegated from the Premiership - lets wait and see what unfolds in the next 7-10 days on this one.