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For some reason the world at large, and the political class specifically, seem captivated by the idea that bankers making multi-million dollar bonuses must somehow be smarter, wiser, more astute, than the rest of the human race.
Nothing could be further from the truth...:p
Sure, I believe the worst of the financial crisis is over. Don't you? :rolleyes:
Kazakh Bank Lost Billions in Western Investments
Published: November 27, 2009
LONDON — In the last few years, big banks have found many surprising ways to lose billions of dollars by making loans that turned sour. But few can match the odd tale involving Kazakhstan and a little-known bank that many Western financiers wish had remained so to them.
From 2003 to 2008, the likes of Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, Royal Bank of Scotland, ING and others funneled more than $10 billion in loans into Kazakhstan’s largest bank...
...Hoping to become the dominant bank in the region, BTA, as the bank is known, cast its eye well beyond Kazakhstan and lent billions of dollars to finance vast real estate projects in Russia and Ukraine, as well as offshore companies with vague business plans and no trading histories to speak of, according to executives at BTA who did not want to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter. The money went to companies with names like Best Catch Trading and Sandown Holding, based in places as diverse as the Seychelles, the British Virgin Islands and England, that offered up little in the way of collateral, according to these executives.
Among other things, prosecutors in Kazakhstan and a team of international lawyers and accountants hired by Bank Turalem are investigating whether the foreign banks may have unwittingly financed a scheme by BTA’s former chairman, Mukhtar Ablyazov, to direct between $8 billion and $12 billion worth of BTA loans — about half of the bank’s loan book — to companies that he secretly controlled...
...“BTA was one of the least transparent banks here, and there were a whole bunch of transactions prior to the seizure that indicated extremely lax banking,” said Michael Carter, the chief executive of Visor Capital, an investment bank based in Kazakhstan. “But Kazakhstan was very sexy at the time, and foreign banks were just shoveling in money, so much so that that banks here had more money than they knew what to do with.”...
Nothing could be further from the truth...:p
...From 2003 to 2008, the likes of Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, Royal Bank of Scotland, ING and others funneled more than $10 billion in loans into Kazakhstan’s largest bank, Bank Turalem, as the large Central Asian country enjoyed a growth boom spurred by its rich deposits of oil and natural gas.
So many of these loans are now bust that many foreign banks are facing write-offs of as much as 80 percent of their value, prompting investigations into why the loans went so bad so fast...
So many of these loans are now bust that many foreign banks are facing write-offs of as much as 80 percent of their value, prompting investigations into why the loans went so bad so fast...
Kazakh Bank Lost Billions in Western Investments
Published: November 27, 2009
LONDON — In the last few years, big banks have found many surprising ways to lose billions of dollars by making loans that turned sour. But few can match the odd tale involving Kazakhstan and a little-known bank that many Western financiers wish had remained so to them.
From 2003 to 2008, the likes of Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, Royal Bank of Scotland, ING and others funneled more than $10 billion in loans into Kazakhstan’s largest bank...
...Hoping to become the dominant bank in the region, BTA, as the bank is known, cast its eye well beyond Kazakhstan and lent billions of dollars to finance vast real estate projects in Russia and Ukraine, as well as offshore companies with vague business plans and no trading histories to speak of, according to executives at BTA who did not want to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter. The money went to companies with names like Best Catch Trading and Sandown Holding, based in places as diverse as the Seychelles, the British Virgin Islands and England, that offered up little in the way of collateral, according to these executives.
Among other things, prosecutors in Kazakhstan and a team of international lawyers and accountants hired by Bank Turalem are investigating whether the foreign banks may have unwittingly financed a scheme by BTA’s former chairman, Mukhtar Ablyazov, to direct between $8 billion and $12 billion worth of BTA loans — about half of the bank’s loan book — to companies that he secretly controlled...
...“BTA was one of the least transparent banks here, and there were a whole bunch of transactions prior to the seizure that indicated extremely lax banking,” said Michael Carter, the chief executive of Visor Capital, an investment bank based in Kazakhstan. “But Kazakhstan was very sexy at the time, and foreign banks were just shoveling in money, so much so that that banks here had more money than they knew what to do with.”...
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