The Bankwatch

Serious concerns about my old alma mater Bank voiced from Citi analysts.  They have a significant funding gap apparently, although by my calculations they are very well capitalised.  Their issue appears to be liquidity.  The vultures are lurking.  In a related note, apparently 25% of WAMU shares are sold short at the moment. 

HBOS falls on wholesale funding concerns

Shares in the UK’s largest mortgage lender fell up to 40 per cent earlier in the session and settled 50½p lower at 182p, cutting its market capitalisation to £9.58bn ($17.1bn).

The collapse of Lehman has made banks more reluctant to lend to each other in the wholesale markets and this has widened interbank lending rates, making funding more expensive.

Citigroup analysts estimated on Tuesday that HBOS had a funding gap of £197.8bn. They also estimated that HBOS had £29bn of term funding maturing as of the first half in 2008 and about £24bn it needed to refinance each year.

HBOS also has one of the highest loan-to-deposit ratios, seen as a measure of risk, of any European bank, at 177 per cent.

Total Assets        487.57
Total Liabilities   424.22
Total Equity           63.35

6.7 :1

The world’s biggest banks | Economist.com

HSBC became the world’s biggest bank last year, supplanting Bank of America, according to The Banker magazine, which ranks 1,000 banks by their holdings of tier-one capital.

Barclays are coming under considerable scrutiny as a result of two unrelated sets of circumstances.  Nerves are frayed amongst bankers, even the big ones!

FT.com / Companies / Financial services – Anxious market catches Barclays short of £1.6bn

The trigger for the crisis of confidence was the unexpected
resignation two weeks ago of Edward Cahill, the Barclays investment
banker responsible for creating vehicles such as Cairn High Grade
Funding.  Although a relatively junior banker, Mr Cahill’s departure sparked rumours about possible losses at the bank.

Nevertheless, confidence took such a knock that, after a technical
glitch disrupted the money markets on Wednesday afternoon, Barclays
found it had a £1.6bn shortfall in its accounts with the Bank of
England and had no choice but to borrow from the central bank’s
emergency facility.

Money market participants also suggested that Barclays’ need for cash may have been an unfortunate accident explainable by the fact that more senior staff were on holiday.

Technorati Tags: barclays, subprime+crisis

Nice interactive map showing the worldwide impacts.

FT.com / In depth – Mapping the credit crunch

The FT’s exclusive interactive map charts how and when many of the financial groups affected by the crisis in the US subprime mortgage markets and the consequent turmoil in credit markets worldwide either made a killing or lost their shirts.