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Post by Sapphire Capital on Mar 17, 2013 1:24:38 GMT 4
The EU in its infinite wisdom decided to arrange a hair cut for every bank customer in Cyprus, when you have more than 100000 Euro its 10%, below its 6.75% they will take on Tuesday, since Monday is a Holiday, they also closed all ATM and so the Bank Customers will supply almost 6B Euro while the EU will supply 13 B Euro and Russia is said to ok a loan for 2.5 B Euro.
I believe this to be a mistake, because turning away from a tabu when in trouble will send a message for Spain, Italy, Portugal, Ireland etc. and means the Eurozone money is not safe anymore.
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Post by eco on Mar 17, 2013 9:43:02 GMT 4
Unfair, short-sighted and self-defeating
Mar 16th 2013, 14:54 by A.P.
IT IS not a fudge, but it is still a failure. The euro zone’s bail-out of Cyprus, which was sealed in the early hours of Saturday, did get the bill for creditor countries down from €17 billion to €10 billion, as had been rumoured. But the way it did so was somewhat unexpected.
Almost €6 billion of the savings for taxpayers in euro-zone countries came from losses imposed on depositors in Cyprus’s outsize banks. A one-off 9.9% levy will be imposed on all deposits over the insurance threshold of €100,000 before banks reopen after a bank holiday on Monday. That idea had been in the air for a while, not least because a lot of those uninsured deposits came from outside Cyprus, and from Russia in particular. The politics of saving wealthy Russians with money loaned by thrifty Germans were always going to be tricky.
What had not been anticipated was a 6.75% loss for savers with deposits in Cypriot banks below the insurance ceiling. Cypriots woke up this morning to find bank branches closed to them. By the time they will be able to get at their money, it will be too late. The offer of equity in banks to replace the value of their savings is meant to be a balm but it’s not a choice they would have made. Why this decision was taken is not yet clear. The most plausible explanation is that the Cypriot government itself preferred to spread the pain rather than wipe out non-resident depositors and jeopardise its long-term prospects as an offshore financial centre for Russian and other money.
Whatever the rationale, it is a mistake for three reasons. The first error is to reawaken contagion risk elsewhere in the euro zone. Depositors have come through the financial crisis largely unscathed. Now they have been bailed in, some of them in breach of an explicit promise that they can be sure of getting their money back even if a bank goes belly-up.
Euro-zone leaders will spin the deal as reflecting the unique circumstances surrounding Cyprus, just as they did the Greek debt restructuring last year. But if you were a depositor in a peripheral country that looked like it needed more money from the euro zone, what would your calculation be? That you would never be treated like the people in Cyprus, or that a precedent had been set which reflected the consistent demands of creditor countries for burden-sharing? The chances of big, destabilising movements of money (into cash, if not into other banks) have just shot up.
The second error is one of equity. There is an argument to be made over the principles of bailing in uninsured depositors. And there is a case for hitting everyone in Cypriot banks before any taxpayer in another country. But there is no moral imperative for whacking Cypriot widows and leaving senior bank bondholders untouched, as appears to be the case here; or not imposing any losses on sovereign-debt investors in Cyprus; or protecting depositors in the Greek operations of Cypriot banks, as has also happened. The euro zone may cloak this bail-out in the language of fairness but it is a highly selective treatment. Indeed, the euro zone’s insistence that this is a one-off makes that perfectly plain: with enough foreigners at risk and a small enough country to push around, you get an outcome like Cyprus. (That is one reason why people are now wondering about the implications of this deal for little Latvia, also home to lots of Russian money and itself due to join the euro zone in 2014.)
The final error is strategic. The Cypriot deal has no coherence in the larger context. The euro crisis has been in abeyance for a few months, thanks largely to the readiness of the European Central Bank to intervene to help struggling countries. The ECB’s price for helping countries is to insist they go into a bail-out programme. The political price of going into a programme has just gone up, so the ECB’s safety net looks a little thinner.
The bail-out appears to move Europe further away from the institutional reforms that are needed to resolve the crisis once and for all. Rather than using the European Stability Mechanism to recapitalise banks, and thereby weaken the link between banks and their governments, the euro zone continues to equate bank bail-outs with sovereign bail-outs. As for debt mutualisation, after imposing losses on local depositors, the price of support from the rest of Europe is arguably costlier now than it ever has been.
It is also hard to square this outcome with the ongoing overhaul of finance. The direction of efforts to improve banks’ liquidity position is to encourage them to hold more deposits; the aim of bail-in legislation planned to come into force by 2018 is to make senior debt absorb losses in the event of a bank failure. The logic behind both of these reform initiatives is that bank deposits have two, contradictory properties. They are both sticky, because they are insured; and they are flighty, because they can be pulled instantly. So deposits are a good source of funding provided they never run. The Cyprus bail-out makes this confidence trick harder to pull off.
Other than that, it is a really good deal.
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Post by Galahad on Mar 18, 2013 6:19:52 GMT 4
Authored by Lars Seier Christensen, CEO Saxo Bank; originally posted at his blog at TradingFloor.com,
It is difficult to describe the weekend bailout package to Cyprus in any other way. The confiscation of 6.75 percent of small depositors’ money and 9.9 percent of big depositors’ funds is without precedence that I can think of in a supposedly civilised and democratic society. But maybe the European Union (EU) is no longer a civilised democracy?
I heard rumours about this when I visited Limassol last week, but dismissed them as completely outlandish. And yet, here we are. The consequences are unpredictable, but we are clearly looking at a significant paradigm shift.
This is a breach of fundamental property rights, dictated to a small country by foreign powers and it must make every bank depositor in Europe shiver. Although the representatives at the bailout press conference tried to present this as a one-off, they were not willing to rule out similar measures elsewhere – not that it would have mattered much as the trust is gone anyway. It is now difficult to expect any kind of limitation to what measures the Troika and EU might take when the crisis really starts to bite.
If you can do this once, you can do it again. if you can confiscate 10 percent of a bank customer’s money, you can confiscate 25, 50 or even 100 percent. I now believe we will see worse as the panic increases, with politicians desperately trying to keep the EUR alive.
Depositors in other prospective bailout countries must be running scared – is it safe to keep money in an Italian, Spanish or Greek bank any more? I dont know, must be the answer. Is it prudent to take the risk? You decide. I fear this will lead to massive capital outflows from weak Eurozone countries, just about the last thing they need right now. Even from the EU as a whole, I suspect, as the banking union is in place in most countries already.
Another open question is what will happen to the huge number of brokerages based in Cyprus? There is about 100 or more FX and other brokers currently operating under the relatively light Cypriot regulation. How will this impact the trustworthiness of these many small institutions? What IS the exact impact on the client deposits they might be holding in Cyprus? Will anyone dare to do business with them going forward?
This is a major, MAJOR game changer and the fallout will be with us for a long time to come. I believe it could be the beginning of the end for the Eurozone as this is an unbelievable blow to the already challenged trust that might be left among investors. Talk about a possible own goal.
Market reaction? it must be very good for gold – and for safe-haven countries like Switzerland, Singapore and economically more healthy non-Euro countries in, for example, Scandinavia. I would think the EUR and associated markets will be undermined by increasing lack of confidence when the full implications become clear for investors.
This is full-blown socialism and I still cannot believe this really happened.
Be careful out there…
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Post by Vlad on Mar 18, 2013 10:48:53 GMT 4
The Central Bank of Cyprus has ordered all national banks to suspend operations at both domestic and foreign offices, a Cypriot news website reported on Sunday.
Cypriot website 24h said it has obtained a confidential Central Bank letter calling on Cypriot banks on Saturday to stop all form of payments from their accounts, even those that were from one account at the bank to another.
The measure, which Cypriot media said is a “blow to the country's banking system,” comes after EU finance ministers agreed on Saturday to tax deposits in Cyprus as part of the extraordinary 10 billion-euro ($13 billion) bailout.
Debt-laden Cyprus has been forced to impose a levy of 6.75 percent on deposits of less than 100,000 euros and 9.9 percent on deposits with greater sums. Cypriots reacted with shock and rushed to banks' cash machines that refused to release cash.
Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades said he had to choose between the "catastrophic scenario of disorderly bankruptcy or the scenario of a painful but controlled management of the crisis". He said those who keep deposits in Cypriot banks for two years will get half of the value of the levy in securitized gas revenues.
Cyprus’s debt crisis puts at risk Russian businesses, which have strong financial ties with Cyprus, Moody's credit-rating agency said on Wednesday. The report said Russian banks working with the Russian companies registered in Cyprus, might lose billions of dollars should the island's government default on its debt obligations.
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Post by lairezippert on Mar 19, 2013 0:08:07 GMT 4
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Post by Noor on Mar 19, 2013 11:39:45 GMT 4
A look at Cyprus' move to seize bank deposits
By SARAH DiLORENZO | Associated Press
Protesters who wrote "NO" on their hands protesting outside of the parliament in capital Nicosia, Cyprus, Monday, March 18, 2013. A vote on a bailout package for Cyprus that includes an immediate tax on all savings accounts has been postponed until Tuesday evening. Yiannakis Omirou, the speaker of Parliament, said the delay was needed to give the government time to amend the deal reached over the weekend that prompted an outcry from those who thought their money was safe. In order to get euro10 billion ($13 billion) in bailout loans from international creditors, Cyprus agreed to take a percentage of all deposits — including ordinary citizens' savings — an unprecedented step in Europe's 3 ½-year debt crisis. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)
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Associated Press/Petros Karadjias - Protesters who wrote "NO" on their hands protesting outside of the parliament in capital Nicosia, Cyprus, Monday, March 18, 2013. A vote on a bailout package for Cyprus that …more
PARIS (AP) — Lawmakers in Cyprus are still scrambling for a way to raise €5.8 billion ($7.5 billion) to help pay for an international bailout of the country's banks and government.
A plan to seize up to 10 percent of people's savings has been met with fury and it has raised concern, if not panic, in the rest of Europe about the security of bank deposits in times of financial turmoil.
On Tuesday, Cypriot lawmakers are scheduled to vote a revised plan that would not be so burdensome for people with less than €100,000 in the bank. Any plan must be approved by the other eurozone countries, which would then commit €10 billion in rescue loans to Cyprus.
Banks in Cyprus will remain shut until Thursday to give political leaders time to hash out a deal.
Here's a look at the plan and the problems it may pose.
HEY, HOW CAN THEY DO THAT?
As a member of the euro currency, Cyprus can to raise or lower taxes whenever it wants. It isn't the first time that a eurozone nation has raised taxes to cope with mounting debt and to prop up struggling banks. Residents of Greece, Portugal and Ireland — all bailout recipients — have seen their tax bills skyrocket in recent years as those countries tried to reduce their debts. But Cyprus is charting new ground here, and there could be legal — and political — challenges.
AND HOW EXACTLY WILL IT WORK?
Banks have already acted to seal off the amount of the levy — a 6.75 percent tax on deposits under €100,000 and 9.9 percent on those above — so depositors can't access it. Banks will remain closed until Thursday to avoid a rush of withdrawals while lawmakers finalize the move. They will vote on Tuesday, but some are seeking modifications, mainly to lower the tax rate on deposits under €100,000. To do that, however, they have to raise the rate for the larger depositors, since the overall scheme has to raise a total of €5.8 billion.
HAS THIS EVER HAPPENED BEFORE?
So far in the euro crisis, depositors have been protected. But European countries have taxed bank deposits before. In the 1990s, Italy levied a tax on every bank account to stave off the collapse of its lire currency. The rate, however, was miniscule — 0.06 percent — compared to what Cyprus is enacting. Iceland — another island with an outsized financial sector, although worse weather — also relied on depositors to prop up its banks. When the crisis hit there in 2008, Iceland protected its domestic deposits but reneged on deposit insurance for overseas, Internet-based accounts held by British and Dutch. Those two governments stepped in to help their citizens to the tune of $5 billion. The U.K. and the Netherlands sued Iceland unsuccessfully in a European court to get their money back, but Iceland has nevertheless started to repay some of that money.
European officials are promising this Cyprus is a unique case, and they are right in one aspect: Cypriot banks are overwhelmingly funded by deposits, not bondholders. So it wouldn't have been very fruitful to go after bondholders.
WHO IS AFFECTED?
All people with money in Cypriot banks — except those with money in Greek branches, which will be sold to Greek banks. EU and IMF creditors clearly wanted to protect struggling Greece, but perhaps also saw that Greece is the most likely place in the eurozone for a bank run. Protecting depositors there minimizes that possibility. Of the more than €68 billion on deposit in Cypriot banks, foreigners hold about 40 percent — and most of those are Russians. Cyprus could have only gone after non-EU depositors, but it may have been hard to distinguish between Cypriot and Russian savers, said Jacob Kirkegaard, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. That is because many Russians have dual citizenship and many Russian businesses are registered on the island. Kirkegaard said Cypriots may paradoxically welcome this measure since the government just managed to widen its tax base to include a lot of Russians; the taxes levied in Greece, Portugal and Ireland were for residents alone to shoulder.
WHY DID CYPRUS NEED A BAILOUT?
Cyprus built its economy in recent years by becoming a financial center, much the way Ireland and Iceland before it did. Its banks offered Internet accounts to foreigners, were renowned for their service, provided substantial privacy to clients and had very low taxes. It worked so well that Cyprus' banking industry ballooned to nearly eight times the country's gross domestic product at the height of the boom. In December, it was still more than seven times Cyprus' €17.5 billion GDP. Russians — looking for warmer climes, lower tax rates and shared culture in the form of Orthodox Christianity — are thought to hold the majority of those accounts, with about €20 billion in the island's banks.
But Cyprus' banks held a lot of Greek debt and suffered significant losses when they took a writedown of those bonds as part of the Greek bailout. Much of Cyprus' bailout money will be used to recapitalize Cypriot banks to prevent them from collapsing. Like other eurozone countries, Cyprus has also seen its deficit and debt explode as growth has ground to a halt. And with the banking system so large, the government wouldn't have been able to bail it out even in a healthy economy.
WHY DO RUSSIANS KEEP SO MUCH MONEY IN CYPRUS?
Russian businessmen have preferred to place their savings in offshore jurisdictions, partly to escape political uncertainty and corruption in Russia. Cyprus offers a 10 percent corporate tax rate and relatively stable political situation. Cyprus is also believed to be a top destination for money-laundering. It is much safer for a corrupt Russian official to keep proceeds from illegal activities abroad, hiding information about their fortunes and holdings away from the prying eyes of Russian banking regulators. Russian officials estimated that about $49 billion, which is equivalent to 2.5 percent of Russia's gross domestic product, was wired to foreign accounts illegally last year.
WHAT HAS THE MARKET REACTION BEEN?
Stock markets and the euro dropped on Monday but not too much. Kirkegaard says that the decision to tap depositors indicates that the European Central Bank is confident that the risk of a bank run elsewhere in the eurozone is low — and by excluding Greek branches of Cypriot banks, they have reduced the possibility even further.
But Heather Conley, director of Europe program for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says it's hard to know the far-reaching implications of this one-off deal. The "exceptions" created to solve Europe's debt crisis are adding up, she said. And some investors may look at this late-night, three-day-weekend deal and see what she saw: a dress rehearsal for a country dropping out of the euro.
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AP Writer Menelaos Hadjicostis contributed to this report from Nicosia, Cyprus.
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Post by resistk on Mar 20, 2013 6:43:04 GMT 4
Killing their financial sector hardly seems like a smart move. No one in their right mind will bank or set up a corp. in Cyprus after this - that Russian money will go to Hong Kong, Montenegro, and the BVI. Same stupidity that wiped out the Bahamas as a financial centre ten years back and led to the rise of the TCI and BVI.
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Post by niseag on Mar 21, 2013 2:56:05 GMT 4
20 March 2013
Cypriot officials have said the country's banks, which were closed to prevent mass withdrawals, will remain shut until at least Tuesday.
On Wednesday afternoon the cabinet began an emergency meeting to discuss alternatives to an EU-IMF bailout deal rejected by parliament on Tuesday.
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Post by Sapphire Capital on Mar 26, 2013 4:01:28 GMT 4
Cyprus banks will stay closed till 28th of March 2013
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Post by infohelps on Mar 26, 2013 22:03:40 GMT 4
EU captain have stated that the solutions now applied to/ with Cyprus are a blueprint for the rest of Europe.
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Post by Noor on Mar 27, 2013 16:27:15 GMT 4
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Post by H on Apr 17, 2013 3:19:15 GMT 4
Non-resident investors who held deposits prior to March 15, when the plan to impose losses on savers was first formulated, and who lost at least €3m would be eligible to apply for Cypriot citizenship, said President Nicos Anastasiades.
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