EBS bushwacked

thelord

I see this merger as daylight robbery. Just handing EBS over to prop up a corrupt AIB. EBS had no gotten round to giving out 100% Mortgage product and not being run to gouge their Members of every penny.

coylemj

Don't paint the EBS as an innocent victim of the banking crisis.

Not content with building themselves a glass palace head office in Burlington Road and despite that fact that they didn't have to pay dividends to shareholders, they decided that the building boom represented a gravy train that they couldn't resist so they got into the business of giving out loans to developers and they got burnt in the process.

The EBS represented an asset supposedly owned by the people with share accounts but like the member of Irish Nationwide, the EBS members have had their equity flushed down the drain by naked greed.

chris85

And they had offered 100% mortgages. They got into it in 2005. Some may say they had no choice as everyone else was doing them but whoever says this are idiots. EBS offered these products to make money and it was risky and as we all know it went pearshaped.

http://89.207.56.144/news/2005/0830/ebs-business.html

I dont know why you are defending EBS to be honest.

dotsman

I'm not quite sure where this thread is coming from.

thelord, you, like so many, clearly don't understand the current financial crisis, and to go into that now would be way too much for a simple boards thread. All I will say is this:

thelord wrote: »

I see this merger as daylight robbery.

It has nothing to do with robbery. I'm not quite sure who you think is being "robbed"? Two institutes, neither of which can survive independently on the market, are being merged in the hope of forming a single entity, that in time will be able to stand on its own two feet. Why these banks? AIB, because of it's importance to the entire Irish economic system and EBS, mainly because it serves no purpose on it's own, but it would send shockwaves through the economy if the government let it collapse (and they also can't afford the cost of winding it down!).

thelord wrote: »

Just handing EBS over to prop up a corrupt AIB.

I'm afraid you got this the wrong way around. EBS had to be merged with someone or it would have simply disappeared. AIB, due to it's importance was always going to get government support. The merger has more to do with EBS's survival than AIB's. Thus, it is more AIB propping up EBS.

Also, I'm not sure where you got the adjective "corrupt" from. AIB is an institution of tens of thousands of employees involved in various areas of complex finance. Did it make mistakes? Sure. Was it badly managed? Sure. Will at least one of the tens of thousands of employees be corrupt? Of course. But to call AIB (or any banks) "corrupt" merely makes any argument you have sound extremely childish.

thelord wrote: »

EBS had no gotten round to giving out 100% Mortgage product

Once again, you have everything arseways. EBS did offer and promote 100% mortgages. AIB desperately tried to fight them. They never advertised them, restricted access to them to a select few and suffered greatly during the boom years because of it, losing a lot of business and being berated regularly by journalists and all the other fools.

EBS
AIB
AIB
AIB

P.S. The whole "100% mortgages caused the problem" thing is overblown, used by people who don't really understand what happened and fundamentally, incorrect. 100% mortgages, even in today's market, are not necessarily a bad idea (upon certain criteria being met). It's when they are being offered freely and actively encouraged, then they are a symptom that something is wrong, but not the actual cause of it.

thelord wrote: »

not being run to gouge their Members of every penny.

Finally, I'm actually not quite sure what this bit means! And to be honest, I'd imagine it means nothing intellectual/factual, so I'm just going to ignore it for now.