Sunday, January 18, 2009

How to lose £3.6 billion in a nanosecond

Brown's ability to destroy value is, of course,legendary - you only have to look at his perfect timing and exceptionally brilliant execution of the sale of a large chunk of Britain's gold.
But the probability of the £5 billion of RBS preference shares being transformed into £1.4 billion of equity tomorrow is the fastest loss of £3.6billion imaginable - and even the income is gone and it will be dividends the Treasury gets - but not for a long time.
This transaction alone represents a loss ( and of real cash) of £600 or so for every man woman and child in the UK.
The only plus point is it saves RBS about £600 million in interest a year.
But then, that's a drop in the ocean.

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