What you can get for $100 billion
Peter Hoskin 8:56amWe all know about the damage the credit crunch has wreaked on financial institutions, but this anecdote in Anatole Kaletsky's column today is still pretty astonishing:
I wonder what $100 billion will buy in October 2009..."An even more spectacular case came to my attention in an e-mail I received in mid-November, when global stock markets hit their low-point (so far). Royal Bank of Scotland, my reader pointed out, spent $100 billion to buy ABN Amro, the second-biggest bank in the Netherlands, in October 2007. If only the directors of RBS had been a bit more patient, this is what they could have bought for the same $100 billion a year later: Citibank ($22 billion) plus Goldman Sachs ($21 billion) plus Merrill Lynch ($12 billion) plus Morgan Stanley ($11 billion) plus Deutsche Bank ($13 billion) plus Barclays ($13 billion). And RBS would still have had $8 billion left over to buy a golden parachute for Sir Fred Goodwin, its discredited chief executive."
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Bob
December 29th, 2008 9:20am Report this commentThe UK?
Lance Grundy
December 29th, 2008 9:43am Report this comment"I wonder what $100 billion will buy in October 2009..."
...Britain?
oldtimer
December 29th, 2008 10:07am Report this commentA wheelbarrow to cart your cash about.
Obnoxio The Clown
December 29th, 2008 11:02am Report this commentA peerage?
Max Kaye
December 29th, 2008 11:46am Report this comment£1 Trillion?
Ray
December 29th, 2008 11:53am Report this commentA couple of African countries?
Wilhelm
December 29th, 2008 1:47pm Report this commentBuy Gordon Broons ego which is the size of the planet Jupiter.
TGF UKIP
December 29th, 2008 6:53pm Report this commentFascinating piece. The ABN fiasco though owed everything to Goodwin's over-vaunting ego and that RBS had much more supine non-execs than Barclays who withdrew from the bidding.
Which is today why RBS is nationalised and Barclays still independent.
Verity
December 30th, 2008 4:19am Report this commentRay, who'd want a couple of African countries?
Ray
December 31st, 2008 11:41am Report this commentVerity - sadly no one, I suspect.
Incidentally, did you know that most African languages don't have a word for the English term 'to suffer from depression'. Just as well given the burdens most ordinary Africans have to bear in their daily lives.
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