B&B Bank 'To Be Nationalised'

Bradford and Bingley is to be nationalised and an announcement will be made before the markets open, Sky News has learned. Savers have been told their money is safe - but what about staff, shareholders and taxpayers? Joel Hills reports.

It’s a High Street name in need of rescuing, but talks to find a private buyer have run out of time. Santander was interested in some of Bradford & Bingley’s assets, but wouldn’t be rushed into a weekend deal. The government has decided, the taxpayer has to step in.

Bradford&Bingley has been in trouble for some time, just look at how its share price collapsed in the last 12 months. On Friday, shares were being bought and sold for just 20 pence.

A crisis of confidence was brewing but the opposition insists nationalization is not the answer.

We should have a situation in Britain, where we have the ability for the Bank of England to take over failing bank and to reconstruct it, safeguarding the depositors and then making sure that those bits of the businesses can be sold are sold. And in the end, the bill affectively is picked up…

Not by the tax payers who I want to protect. Thank you for the..., So a bank is sold for…

The government maintains it will act in the best interests of savers and taxpayers.

This is not simply a problem for the United Kingdom, this is a global crisis. We have taken tough decisive action to sort out the situation and I am confident that in due course, there will be a statement from the Treasury about Bradford&Bingley, I am not going to add to the speculation.

The message for Bradford&Bingley’s 2.5 million savers is your money (is) safe, although you may find yourselve suddenly banking with someone else, retail deposits are likely to be sold on to the likes of Santander, HSBC and Barclays.

What happens next to Bradford&Bingley’s 3000 staff isn’t clear. 370 redundancies were announced earlier in the week with the branch network also said to be flogged off. More job losses look likely.

For the rest of us, the news is not that encouraging. Bradford&Bingley has written 41 billon pounds of mortgages; those loans are now turning bad at twice the average industry rate. In a falling housing market, no bank is likely to be interested, the really toxic stuff is likely to left with the taxpayer.

The result of this breakup is that yet another mortgage provider has disappeared from the market, and less competition could well make mortgages scarcer and more expensive.

Until now, banks and building societies have either been nationalized or taken over when they run into trouble. But some feel the government shouldn’t be bailing out individual banks, it’s the banking system that needs saving.

We have a business models and our banking system that don’t work anymore. You know, unless we do something comprehensive, unless we really look this in the eye that the Americans have done, I really fear for what’s gonna happen in the next kind of two, three, four, five months.

There're reports that the British banks have asked government to arrange a rescue package similar to the one that’s being flushed out in the United States. The suggestion is that Bradford&Bingley isn’t the only British bank in trouble.

参考中文翻译：

据Sky News了解，英国房贷巨头Bradford and Bingley将要实行国有化，开市之前将会进行宣布。储户被告知他们的钱是安全的——但是员工，股东和纳税人呢？Joel Hills 报道。

该房贷巨头亟需救助，但是寻找私人买主时间不足。Santander有意于Bradford&Bingley 的部分资产，但是不可能周末马上进行交易。政府决定：纳税人必须采取行动。

Bradford&Bingley陷入困境已有一段时间，从过去12个月股价狂跌可以看出。周五，股票成交价格只有20便士。

政府正在酿造挽回人民对危机的信心，但是在野党坚持，国有化并不能解决问题。

我们需要了解一下英国的形势。英国银行有能力接管破产银行进行重建，保卫储蓄者，确保能够售出的企业成功出售。最后，由谁买单呢？

不是由我们想保护的纳税人。感谢……，银行出售是为了……

政府坚持他们会为了储户和纳税人的最大利益而采取行动。

这不仅仅是英国的问题，这是全球经济危机。我们已经采取了果断措施对形势进行控制，我相信通过这些措施，财务部关于Bradford&Bingley会发表声明，我不想再进行更多的推测。

传达给Bradford&Bingley250万储户的信息是，你们的钱是安全的，虽然你会发现你的钱到了其他银行，存款可能会被转到Santander, HSBC和Barclays。

Bradford&Bingley3000名员工前途未卜。Bradford&Bingley贷出410亿抵押贷款，而坏账率是市场平均值的两倍。由于房地产市场的崩溃，没有银行会有兴趣接受新的员工，所以这些深受其害的员工可能和纳税人处于相同境地。

该银行破产的结果是另一个贷款巨头从市场上消失，贷款行业竞争减少，贷款资源稀缺，价格更高。

目前为止，银行和建筑公司一旦遭遇问题，都被收归国有或者被接管。但是有人说，政府不应该对单独的某个银行进行救市，需要拯救的是银行系统。

我们的商业模式和银行体系都不再运转。你知道，除非我们采取一些综合的措施，除非我们我们像美国人所做的那样，我真的担心接下去的几个月内形势会怎样。

有报告说，英国的银行向政府提出申请类似美国所采取的一揽子救市方案，暗示Bradford&Bingley并非唯一陷入困境的英国银行。