German Banks leaving the IFSC- Sunday Times

[PaddyJoe]

One story that the Irish Sunday Times did cover this week concerned the IFSC bank, Helaba, which is expected to end its Irish operations in the near future after coming under pressure from authorities in Germany.
Helaba pulled out of the European banking stress tests last summer over fears that it would fail.
Last month Landesbank Baden-Wurttemberg(LLBW) also announced that is was shutting down its Irish operation.
Helaba managed a 'conduit fund' which is a kind of fund which invests in long-term assets using short-term money and is considered to be high risk.
Saschen LB, another German bank, needed a 17 billion euro bail out after running into problems with conduits in the IFSC.
Source: ST Biz section 15/1/2012

[TotalMayhem]

Rats and sinking ships come to mind. :D

What happened to your user name, PJ? Didn't know we can change it... ^^

[DCon]

Do Commerzbank have an IFSC presence?

(More) Nationalisation could be in their future says the FT. Insiders at the bank surprisingly say that their plan to raise funds is credible

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/7e956578-4202-11e1-9506-00144feab49a.html#axzz1jqsVMIa9

[Dr. FIVE]

How many staff?

two? four?

[TotalMayhem]

Do Commerzbank have an IFSC presence?

But of course... That even have a building named after them. Oh, the vanity. ;)

Commerzbank Europe (Ire)

Commerzbank House
Guild Street
IFSC
Dublin 1

Phone: +353 1 649 1100
Fax: +353 1 649 1199

[PaddyJoe]

How many staff?

two? four?

30 in Helaba. Around the same number in LLBW. Not many considering the sums they were dealing with.

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

Most of the action with that lot would have been warehousing trades that would have been suspect in Germany.

Thats why the German banks had subsidiaries in the IFSC in the first place.They'll be a bit nervous that German investigations will turn up references to dodgy derivative one-arm-bandit pulling by people flown in from Fankfurt and flown back to regulated Germany.

'Gut mann yourself, Villie'...

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

Heh- yeah ... large sums. Sort of reminds me of the Anglo-Irish Bank Austria AG subsidiary with 600million Eastern European Euros sloshing around in its accounts... the subsidiary that Fitzpatrick couldn't wait to get rid of and actually paid the buying bank a bonus to take off their hands quickly when the balloon went up.

Same thing I suspect for German subsidiaries in the IFSC- there are still investigations going on into the banking sector in Germany so they'll want to close both ends of the pipeline and hunker down...

[C. Flower]

Rats and sinking ships come to mind. :D

What happened to your user name, PJ? Didn't know we can change it... ^^

Want to change your name to Total Relaxation ? :):D


Is there suggestion that they are leaving because of political pressure?

Is that not illegal?

[DCon]

Want to change your name to Total Relaxation ? :):D


TotalAusterity would be better

[Dr. FIVE]

From Dublinopinion

http://dublinopinion.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/ifsc-nationality-1991.JPG

From 1996


In the mid to late 1980s German corporates with international operations often established investment vehicles in the United States as a means of achieving a higher return on corporate liquidity than would have been the case in Germany, where Corporation and other taxes continue to be very high by international standards these corporate were also attracted at the level of investment expertise of US money managers, frequently provided by the New York offices of German banks.

Changes in the US chairman double taxation agreement of 1989, however, removed most of the attractions of such vehicles. Somewhat fortuitously, these changes coincided with the establishment of the IFSC. Before long most of the major German banks had established operations in Dublin. At the IFSC, these banks – and a number of other IFSC operators – were able to offer a combination of experienced international investment management, a low 10% corporation tax rate and the benefits of a favourable double taxation agreement between Ireland and Germany.

Unfortunately, this resolution of some of the taxation problems of German corporates also coincided with the increasing drain on the German Exchequer cars by reunification.


http://dublinopinion.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/mar-2012-052.jpg

[Slim Buddha]

Most of the action with that lot would have been warehousing trades that would have been suspect in Germany.

Thats why the German banks had subsidiaries in the IFSC in the first place.They'll be a bit nervous that German investigations will turn up references to dodgy derivative one-arm-bandit pulling by people flown in from Fankfurt and flown back to regulated Germany.

'Gut mann yourself, Villie'...

Indeed. The Germans are conducting a wholesale clean-up of their financial sector at the moment. And the political will to see this action through is very much present. The ongoing row between Germany and Switzerland over taxation and tax evasion by German citizens putting money in Swiss bank accounts is all part of the mood music of Merkel's sorting out of the banking system in Germany. There are elections shortly in NordRhein-Westphalen which may have something to do with the amount of press coverage this issue is attracting but it seems Merkel and particularly Schäuble, the Finance Minister, are taking no prisoners on this and expect German operations in "Liechtenstein on the Liffey" to be dramatically scaled down.

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

They'll quietly close down as much as possible because although I know the German banks have been as bent as anyone and are still as bent Merkel is busy pretending to the German public that she is outraged and that she expects German banks to be properly run. She knows damn well there's a trillion dollar bump under the financial carpet of the Bundesbank and I reckon those are derivative chickens come home to roost but which cannot under any circumstances be shown on individual bank balance sheets because it would trigger a crisis in German banking.

The political song is that between an inquiry in Hamburg concerning trades by the various provincial banks and Frau Merkel sweeping around energetically in Berlin that everything is being taken care of but that lump is still there under the carpet until she and the Americans can find a way of hiding it for good- probably by flattening it out over a long time and some kind of swap deal with the IMF- to be paid for by the German taxpayer over decades.

Make no mistake about it- the Germans are up to their neck in the fraudulent banking scene because they were feeding massively off the US fraudulent debt packaging same as everyone else.

But the political song is that Germany is the financial rock of Europe. And politically they can't admit to anything else. They'll hang some small fry out to dry domestically and declare themselves clean. Which will be another fraud.

[Slim Buddha]

They'll quietly close down as much as possible because although I know the German banks have been as bent as anyone and are still as bent Merkel is busy pretending to the German public that she is outraged and that she expects German banks to be properly run. She knows damn well there's a trillion dollar bump under the financial carpet of the Bundesbank and I reckon those are derivative chickens come home to roost but which cannot under any circumstances be shown on individual bank balance sheets because it would trigger a crisis in German banking.

The political song is that between an inquiry in Hamburg concerning trades by the various provincial banks and Frau Merkel sweeping around energetically in Berlin that everything is being taken care of but that lump is still there under the carpet until she and the Americans can find a way of hiding it for good- probably by flattening it out over a long time and some kind of swap deal with the IMF- to be paid for by the German taxpayer over decades.

Make no mistake about it- the Germans are up to their neck in the fraudulent banking scene because they were feeding massively off the US fraudulent debt packaging same as everyone else.

But the political song is that Germany is the financial rock of Europe. And politically they can't admit to anything else. They'll hang some small fry out to dry domestically and declare themselves clean. Which will be another fraud.

I am under no illusions about the nature of the German banks. They are as corrupt as banks anywhere else and the German political establishment know this. Your average German has an extremely low opinion of banks and this is a cultural thing. There is a reason why Germany has, by a country mile, the lowest level of credit card ownership in Europe on avarage. The ordinary German just hates giving money to banks. I remember meeting an American at Frankfurt airport who worked for Citibank (Deutschland). This was about fifteen years ago. We got talking and he told me he had the worst job of anybody working in banking in Germany. I had no idea what that could be and then he told me. "My job is to persuade Germans to use credit cards. It is a nighmare task. They simply refuse to use them."

My ex's family in Berlin possess one credit card between the lot of them, only to be used for booking flights online and stuff like that. I asked one of them if she would max it out on a shopping trip to New York (a favourite Celtic Tiger pasttime) she just looked at me and asked me "Who the hell would do that????"

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

And thats why the German public will never be told the truth about what the two main rival groups of German banks have been up to. It is politically impossible and would mean the end of Merkel for a start and quite possibly her party.

The 'Cash Gruppe' banks are the ones that catch my eye in German affairs- Commerzbank, Deutsche Bank, and of course Hypovereinsbank was one of the four (can't recall the fourth) but you can bet your Galway ass that whatever Hypo were doing so were the others in that 'Cash Gruppe' alliance.

Banks don't go maverick but all chase the same market and just tip around the branded edges in differentiating what they do.