The British government said on Saturday it would step in to save Scotland’s biggest building society, the latest lender crippled by the credit crunch.
The Dunfermline Building Society is expected to announce losses of £26 million (US$37 million) this week and Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy said the government was stepping in to protect depositors.
The BBC reported that the regulators — the Bank of England, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) and the British government — decided the Dunfermline was no longer viable and forced its sale.
Murphy confirmed that London was considering selling on the profitable parts of the building society to other financial institutions, while weeding out its so-called “toxic” assets.
“This organization faces real and severe difficulties. We are acting to make sure there is stability, to protect savers and to do as much as we can to save jobs and branches because Dunfermline is important,” he told BBC TV.
“If there was a standard bailout that we have seen in some of other situations, there is a real worry that the Dunfermline couldn’t actually service the debt,” Murphy said.
Murphy said there had to be a “long-term” solution to the society’s woes, saying other options would do little more than buy time.
He said the government was considering repeating what it did with Bradford and Bingley, a building society that last year was split into two halves, with the branches and deposits sold to Abbey and the mortgage book nationalized.
The Dunfermline, established in 1869, employs almost 500 staff and has a network of 34 branches.
Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond said he was “deeply disappointed” that the Treasury seemed to have ruled out keeping the society independent.
Murphy said it got into trouble because of “reckless” management decisions, such as going into the US subprime mortgage market.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, speaking in Chile at a conference of center-left politicians, stressed the government’s commitment to protecting savers throughout the economic downturn.
“Savers will be protected,” Brown said in Vina del Mar, TV pictures showed. “It is important to recognise that throughout this whole crisis, everyone who has been saving in a UK institution has been protected.”
The Dunfermline had posted a £2 million profit in 2007.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
US-CHINA SUMMIT: MOFA welcomed US reassurance of no change in its Taiwan policy; Trump said he did not comment when Xi talked of opposing independence US President Donald Trump yesterday said he has not made a decision on whether to move forward with a major arms package for Taiwan after hearing concerns about it from Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). Trump’s comments on Taiwan came as he flew back to Washington after wrapping up critical talks in which both leaders said important progress was made in stabilizing US-China relations even as deep differences persist between the world’s two biggest powers on Iran and Taiwan. “I will make a determination,” Trump said, adding: “I’ll be making decisions. But, you know, I think the last thing we need right
TAIWAN ISSUE: US treasury secretary Scott Bessent said on the first day of meetings that ‘it wouldn’t be a US-China summit without the Taiwan issue coming up’ There were no surprises on the first day of the summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday, as the government reiterated that cross-strait stability is crucial to the Asia-Pacific region, as well as the world. As the two presidents met for a highly anticipated summit yesterday, Chinese state media reported that Xi warned Trump that missteps regarding Taiwan could push their two countries into “conflict.” Trump arrived in China with accolades for his host, calling Xi a “great leader” and “friend,” and extending an invitation to visit the White House
RSS