B&B Bank 'To Be Nationalised'

Bradford and Bingley is to be nationalised and an announcement will be made before the markets open, Sky News has learned. Savers have been told their money is safe - but what about staff, shareholders and taxpayers? Joel Hills reports.

It’s a High Street name in need of rescuing, but talks to find a private buyer have run out of time. Santander was interested in some of Bradford & Bingley’s assets, but wouldn’t be rushed into a weekend deal. The government has decided, the taxpayer has to step in.

Bradford&Bingley has been in trouble for some time, just look at how its share price collapsed in the last 12 months. On Friday, shares were being bought and sold for just 20 pence.

A crisis of confidence was brewing but the opposition insists nationalization is not the answer.

We should have a situation in Britain, where we have the ability for the Bank of England to take over failing bank and to reconstruct it, safeguarding the depositors and then making sure that those bits of the businesses can be sold are sold. And in the end, the bill affectively is picked up…

Not by the tax payers who I want to protect. Thank you for the..., So a bank is sold for…

The government maintains it will act in the best interests of savers and taxpayers.

This is not simply a problem for the United Kingdom, this is a global crisis. We have taken tough decisive action to sort out the situation and I am confident that in due course, there will be a statement from the Treasury about Bradford&Bingley, I am not going to add to the speculation.

The message for Bradford&Bingley’s 2.5 million savers is your money (is) safe, although you may find yourselve suddenly banking with someone else, retail deposits are likely to be sold on to the likes of Santander, HSBC and Barclays.

What happens next to Bradford&Bingley’s 3000 staff isn’t clear. 370 redundancies were announced earlier in the week with the branch network also said to be flogged off. More job losses look likely.

For the rest of us, the news is not that encouraging. Bradford&Bingley has written 41 billon pounds of mortgages; those loans are now turning bad at twice the average industry rate. In a falling housing market, no bank is likely to be interested, the really toxic stuff is likely to left with the taxpayer.

The result of this breakup is that yet another mortgage provider has disappeared from the market, and less competition could well make mortgages scarcer and more expensive.

Until now, banks and building societies have either been nationalized or taken over when they run into trouble. But some feel the government shouldn’t be bailing out individual banks, it’s the banking system that needs saving.

We have a business models and our banking system that don’t work anymore. You know, unless we do something comprehensive, unless we really look this in the eye that the Americans have done, I really fear for what’s gonna happen in the next kind of two, three, four, five months.

There're reports that the British banks have asked government to arrange a rescue package similar to the one that’s being flushed out in the United States. The suggestion is that Bradford&Bingley isn’t the only British bank in trouble.

參考中文翻譯：

據Sky News了解，英國房貸巨頭Bradford and Bingley將要實行國有化，開市之前將會進行宣布。儲戶被告知他們的錢是安全的——但是員工，股東和納稅人呢？Joel Hills 報道。

該房貸巨頭亟需救助，但是尋找私人買主時間不足。Santander有意于Bradford&Bingley 的部分資產，但是不可能周末馬上進行交易。政府決定：納稅人必須采取行動。

Bradford&Bingley陷入困境已有一段時間，從過去12個月股價狂跌可以看出。周五，股票成交價格只有20便士。

政府正在釀造挽回人民對危機的信心，但是在野黨堅持，國有化并不能解決問題。

我們需要了解一下英國的形勢。英國銀行有能力接管破產銀行進行重建，保衛儲蓄者，確保能夠售出的企業成功出售。最后，由誰買單呢？

不是由我們想保護的納稅人。感謝……，銀行出售是為了……

政府堅持他們會為了儲戶和納稅人的最大利益而采取行動。

這不僅僅是英國的問題，這是全球經濟危機。我們已經采取了果斷措施對形勢進行控制，我相信通過這些措施，財務部關于Bradford&Bingley會發表聲明，我不想再進行更多的推測。

傳達給Bradford&Bingley250萬儲戶的信息是，你們的錢是安全的，雖然你會發現你的錢到了其他銀行，存款可能會被轉到Santander, HSBC和Barclays。

Bradford&Bingley3000名員工前途未卜。Bradford&Bingley貸出410億抵押貸款，而壞賬率是市場平均值的兩倍。由于房地產市場的崩潰，沒有銀行會有興趣接受新的員工，所以這些深受其害的員工可能和納稅人處于相同境地。

該銀行破產的結果是另一個貸款巨頭從市場上消失，貸款行業競爭減少，貸款資源稀缺，價格更高。

目前為止，銀行和建筑公司一旦遭遇問題，都被收歸國有或者被接管。但是有人說，政府不應該對單獨的某個銀行進行救市，需要拯救的是銀行系統。

我們的商業模式和銀行體系都不再運轉。你知道，除非我們采取一些綜合的措施，除非我們我們像美國人所做的那樣，我真的擔心接下去的幾個月內形勢會怎樣。

有報告說，英國的銀行向政府提出申請類似美國所采取的一攬子救市方案，暗示Bradford&Bingley并非唯一陷入困境的英國銀行。