BOND WATCH
A major new drama, Irish Bond Watch, played out on the international stage last week as 10-year government bond rates rose to 6.5%, the highest rate since we joined the euro in 1999.
A major new drama, Irish Bond Watch, played out on the international stage last week as 10-year government bond rates rose to 6.5%, the highest rate since we joined the euro in 1999.
EBS mortgage customers currently suffering negative equity can forget about having their debt forgiven as part of a takeover deal for the beleaguered building society, The Sunday Tribune reports.
Permanent TSB (PTSB) will stop paying interest on current accounts from tomorrow (Monday) and make it more difficult for new customers to set up free banking, according to The Sunday Times.
Scepticism over the state’s ability to honour its guarantee on deposits and fears over the future of the euro means savers are beginning to look abroad for alternatives, The Sunday Times reports.
Among the detritus of newspaper column inches devoted to the Anglo Irish Bank saga, the most interesting is the lead article in The Sunday Business Post which states the European Commission is preparing to trigger the closure of Irish Nationwide by vetoing its plan to reinvent itself as a mortgage and savings provider.
Ulster Bank is to target small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in a big advertising push next month, according to the Sunday Times.
Businesses already struggling to survive are being surcharged by banks when they are looking for loans, the Sunday Business Post reports.
The Credit Review Offices is preparing to launch an online tool to help small businesses formalise loan inquiries to banks, the Sunday Tribune reports.
The tool will allow SMEs to make an initial inquiry in writing, rather than verbally – helping to eliminate ambiguity. Consultants hired to track SME lending have found that around 20% of loans are turned down. The Office puts down many of the rejections to the verbal nature of the current process.
Banks are claiming that eight out of ten loan applications are being granted to small businesses but Mark Fielding, the chief executive of ISME, is not having any of it. In an article in the Sunday Tribune, the characteristically outspoken Fielding said that some Government-assisted banks are lending again as a result of the state rescue package.
Ministers Brian Lenihan and Batt O’Keeffe are to meet executives of Allied Irish Bank this morning (Monday) to insist they lend more money to small businesses.
Meanwhile, the Sunday Tribune reported that the Financial Regulator plans to introduce tough new regulations this autumn that will lead to sweeping changes on the boards of Irish banks.
Bad news on the horizon for anyone canny enough to have taken out a tracker mortgage to pay for investment property. Permanent TSB is apparently plotting what The Sunday Tribune describes as a “controversial assault on loss-making tracker mortgages by resetting the monthly payments it charges investment property borrowers”
The €22bn of taxpayers’ money flushed down the Anglo Irish Bank toilet may not be the end of the loo roll required for the clean-up, the bank’s chief executive Mike Aynsley has admitted.