Een melt-down en dat uit de mond van Fortis

While For­tis’ cap­i­tal­iza­tion issues have received a lot of press cov­er­age, much less atten­tion has been paid to some recent eco­nom­ic pro­jec­tions made by For­tis. Among oth­er things, the bank is pre­dict­ing that as many as 6,000 U.S. banks will fail with­in the next year or two. For­tis’ Chair­man, Mau­rice Lip­pens, recent­ly stat­ed as fol­lows: ​“The U.S. is doing much worse than we had thought…but the same goes also for Cit­i­group and Gen­er­al Motors, and there­by starts a com­plete melt­down in the U.S.”

Mr. Lip­pens went on to say that,” Two months ago, we did­n’t know yet that the sit­u­a­tion is so dire in the U.S. And the sit­u­a­tion will fur­ther wors­en.” For­tis has recent­ly raised bil­lions of Euros in new cap­i­tal in order to pro­tect itself. Mr. Lip­pens indi­cat­ed that For­tis needs “…a thick cush­ion of funds to sur­vive the next 18 months…” In con­junc­tion with this strat­e­gy, For­tis recent­ly acquired ABN Amro for 24 bil­lion Euros.