I Illustrate How The Irish Banking Cancer Spreads To The UK Taxpayer And Metastizes Through US Markets!

Note to professional and institutional subscribers:  Please download the supporting documents for this report from BoomBustBlog’s subscription archive and depository –  Ulster Bank Supporting Charge Documents. This file contains several hundred pages of documentation to support the assertions and allegations contained in this report.

Ulster Bank Ireland Ltd, has charges registered (see Supporting Charge Documents) with the Irish Companies Registration Office (CRO). The bank gave a first floating charge in favour of the Central Bank of Ireland (an arm of the European Central Bank) and the Financial Services Authority of Ireland encompassing “all its right, title, interest and benefit, present and future, in and to each of the securities of such a class or description as may from time to time be designated by the European Central Bank as eligible for sale and/or purchase, as the case may be, by the Bank under its standard form for the time being of Master Repurchase Agreement, which specification may be made by reference to particular classes of repurchase transactions, and which are included in the schedule of Eligible Securities provided to the Bank from time to time.”.

These charges were registered with the CRO on 15th February 2008, yet there is no mention whatsoever of these charges in the Banks 2008 Annual Accounts (see attached). 

Ulster Bank is a 100% Owned Subsidiary of the UK (now taxpayer owned) Institution – The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS)

In 2008, RBS traded ADR’s in the U.S. under the symbol .NYSE:RBS. These ADR’s were traded OTC.

The bank (Ulster) gave a first floating charge in favour of the Central Bank of Ireland (an arm of the European Central Bank) and the Financial Services Authority of Ireland. U.S. investors would have had to rely on the contents of The Royal Bank of Scotland’s 2008 Annual Accounts which apparently (in my opinion) concealed the existence of the CRO registered charges to the Bank of Ireland.

I also attach charge documents that Ulster Bank entered into with Pfizer International Bank. I cannot find these charges in any disclosures.

If you look at the attached charge documents from Ulster Bank to the Central Bank you will see that the wording is different when compared to the charge documents of the other Irish Banks. It specifically states that a first floating charge was created by the Deed of Floating Charge over Eligible Securities for Liabilities Arising in Target2-Ireland. Having said that I can see no mention of these charges in the Annual Accounts for 2008. On page 72 (28) of the Annual Accounts it gives the only details that I can find of charges registered. It states that A registered charge exists over the assets of the Group, securing all borrowings and other obligations in whatever form that relate to the Group’s use of the Euroclear system, that are outstanding to Morgan Guaranty Brussels and to any other office of Morgan Guaranty Trust Company of New York. This looks as if it could be a double encumbrance of certain assets for the charge to the Central Bank of Ireland features very similar, all-encompassing language for Ulster Bank, which is a fully owned subsidiary of RBS. Although I’m not an international banking attorney, my layman’s eye sees double counting of collateral barring a clause that somehow excludes that covered by the charge over Ulster Bank.

There are also two charge documents for Ulster Bank to Pfizer International Bank. One is for 2009 and the other for 2010. I can see no mention of these in the 2009 and 2010 Annual Accounts.

These charge documents are also not apparent in the recent bank ‘stress testing’ conducted by the European Banking Authority, at least not in the summary results that the EBA have made available, reference RBS Stress Test.

I cannot see how the charge documents are disclosed in the RBS annual accounts (annual report). I see it mentions that the Bank provides collateral in the form of securities in repurchase agreements (footnote page 41). On page 60 it states the Group engages in securitization transactions of its residential loans which are generally transferred to a special purpose entity. This likely relates to the cashflows and not the principal. The charge documents relate to the principal (the actual loan). The registered charge (page 72) exists over the assets of the Group, securing all borrowings and other obligations whatsoever that relate to the Group’s use of the Euroclear system (privately owned by J.P.Morgan, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euroclear).

The charge documents are not covered in the Ulster Bank Annual Accounts or the SEC Group RBS Annual Report. I think that this is a serious misrepresentation of the Accounts/Annual Report. The charge is a floating charge over Secured Obligations (Repo Agreements) which means all present and future liabilities of Ulster Bank (100% owned by RBS). As stated Target2 is only a payment system. The true reasons for the charge increasingly appear to be that of emergency funding, for it also appears as if Ulster Bank was bust. This information should have been included in the SEC Group RBS Annual Report, especially when ADR’s were being traded.

RBS Stress Tests

The afore-linked copy of the RBS Stress Test results do not make it possible to determine whether the charge documents were included in the Stress Test, however it is worth pointing out that the charges do not appear in the annual accounts, so one could assume that they were not included in the stress test. The information is based on data supplied by each bank, via its respective national supervisor. Accuracy of this data is primarily the responsibility of the participating bank and national supervisor. This information has been provided to the EBA in accordance with Article 35 of EU Regulation 1093/2010. The EBA bears no responsibility for errors/discrepancies that may arise in the tables.

A Short Traipse Through Recent History & The Expense That Ultimately Befalls The UK Taxpayer

In 2007 Ireland had significant cross border exposure to UK and US banks through derivatives and property products. As I warned in 2007, the real estate bubble in the the US/UK popped in 2008, sending pathogenic contagion straight through the Irish banking system. The entire banking system started collapsing. On February 15, 2008, Ireland took extraordinary measures (which we will explore in depth a little later on) to mitigate said collapse, measures that many a layperson would deem misleading, if not fraudulent. RBS (Royal Bank of Scotland, one of the largest financial institutions in the countries of Ireland and the UK) was effectively nationalized by the UK and a bad bank was formed to purchase bad debt/products from the Zombie Irish banks in exchange for government bonds, backed by a country that just simply couldn’t afford it.

It was the UK taxpayer that footed the bill for this nationalization – as per Wikipedia:

The bonus payments paid to RBS staff subsequent to the 2008 United Kingdom bank rescue package have led to controversy. Staff bonuses were nearly £1 billion in 2010, even though RBS reported losses of £1.1 billion for 2010. More than 100 senior bank executives were paid in excess of £1 million each in bonuses. Consequently, former CEO Fred Goodwin was stripped of his knighthood in mid-January, and newly appointed CEO Stephen Hester renounced his £1 million bonus after complaints over the bank’s performance.

82 percent of RBS’ shares are now owned by the UK government, which bought RBS stock for £42 billion, representing 50 pence per share. In 2011, the shares were worth 19 pence, representing a taxpayer book loss of £26 billion ($40B). Historically, the RBS stock price went from a high of over 700 pence in early 2007 (taking into account a 3 for 1 stock split that took place later that year) to around 20 pence in late 2011.

… the UK Government (HM Treasury), as of 31 March 2012, holds and manages an 82% stake through UK Financial Investments Limited(UKFI), whose voting rights are limited to 75% in order for the bank to retain its listing on the London Stock Exchange. In addition to its primary share listing on the LSE, the company is also listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The group is based in Edinburgh, Scotland. In 2009, after the financial collapse, it was briefly the world’s largest company by both assets (£1.9 trillion) and liabilities (£1.8 trillion).  In 2012, the UK government announced plans to bid for the rest of the RBS shares that it did not own, as it felt that “while the taxpayer owns over 82pc of the bank following a bailout in 2008, they bear 100pc of the bank’s huge liability risks”.

Part and parcel of the RBS problems was its purchase of Ulster Bank and its exposure to the Irish lending issues!

Following my warning in February of 2008, Lehman filed bankruptcy in September sending an additional set of contagion shock through Ireland and its banking system, causing Ireland to issues bonds and further indebt itself to save its Zombie banks – again! This time through blanket bank guarantees backed by the full faith of the government.

In September of 2010, a large swath of said government guarantees for the banks were about to expire. Reference this excerpt from the book “Zombie Banks: How Broken Banks and Debtor Nations Are Crippling the Global Economy”:

In September 2010, some of Ireland’s government guarantees for bank debts were about to expire, which put U.S. Treasury officials on edge. If the guarantee wasn’t renewed, the banks would likely default on their bonds, triggering the next event in line: a slew of credit default swap (CDS) contracts on Irish banks’ debt. U.S. Treasury officials had reason to worry – the names backing those contracts were the largest U .S. banks, and they could end up paying billions in case of default. Any more weight on U.S. banks could be a tipping point to collapse. Treasury officials made inquiries to their counterparts at the Irish finance ministry asking about the course of action the country was planning to take and indicated their concern about possible default and its CDS repercussions. A year after having issued blanket guarantees on the banks’ liabilities the Irish government once again didn’t dare let the bank fail. Instead it ended up asking for financial assistance from the European Union (EU) and the International Monetary Fund (IIMF): the country had been pushed to the brink of collapse.

Litigation

_{Indications of capital shortfalls in the Ulster Bank arrangement:}

RBS had paid a total of €9.13 billion to Ulster Bank in capital contributions, in order to safeguard the bank’s capital reserves after writing off billions in impaired loans to Irish borrowers. http://businessetc.thejournal.ie/british-banks-bailed-ireland-out-e16bn-762258-Jan2013/.

24th Feb. 2012

ULSTER BANK’S parent company, Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), injected as much as £4 billion (€4.7 billion) into Ulster Bank last year, bringing its total investment in its Irish subsidiary to £10 billion (€11.8 billion) since 2008.

http://www.irishtimes.com/business/sectors/financial-services/rbs-chief-insists-11-8bn-injected-into-ulster-bank-was-too-much-1.469092

2013-04-11 16:46:24

Source: http://boombustblog.com/blog/item/9060-i-illustrate-how-the-irish-banking-disease-spreads-to-the-uk-taxpayer