Friday, August 24, 2007

Heads Start To Roll

The so called "credit crunch" has claimed its first high-profile victim in the UK. Edward Cahill, head of Barclays' European collateralised debt obligations (CDOs), resigned on Monday.

On Wednesday, two investment funds set up by his business had their credit ratings slashed by Standard & Poor's, the rating agency, because of losses from investments in US mortgage-backed securities.

This has not been a good week for Barclays, as it has had something of an unseemly public spat with HSBC, over an interbank loan that Barclays tried to raise from HSBC. Unfortunately, because Barclays made the request rather late in the day HSBC was unable to help and Barclays was forced to go to the Bank of England for the £314M necessary to balance its books.

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