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ABN Amro
“Cheerful” Dutch Financier Becomes 4th ABN Amro Banker Suicide
– “Cheerful” Dutch Financier Becomes 4th ABN Amro Banker Suicide (ZeroHedge, Jan 24, 2015):
Following the deaths of 36 bankers last year, 2015 has got off to an inauspicious start with the reported suicide of Chris Van Eeghen – the 4th ABN Amro banker suicide in the last few years. As Quotenet reports, the death of Van Eghen – the head of ABN’s corporate finance and capital markets -“startled” friends and colleagues as the 42-year-old “had a great reputation” at work, came from an “illustrious family,” and enjoyed national fame briefly as the boyfriend of a famous actress/model. As one colleague noted, “he was always cheerful, good mood, and apparently he had everything your heart desired. He never sat in the pit, never was down, so I was extremely surprised. I can not understand.”
As Niburu details, friends and colleagues were startled by the news that Chris van Eeghen had committed suicide.
He worked in Amsterdam for ABN / AMRO in the position of “head of syndicate and corporate finance markets.”
Again, there is again a familiar pattern, namely that there is no indication that Van Eeghen had plans to take his life.
Read more“Cheerful” Dutch Financier Becomes 4th ABN Amro Banker Suicide
Ex-ABN Amro CEO Killed Family Before Hanging Himself
– Ex-ABN Amro CEO Killed Family Before Hanging Himself (ZeroHedge, April 7, 2014):
Sadly, as suspected – and in line with his CFO in 2009 – the reported death of Jan Peter Schmittmann was indeed suicide. The ex-CEO of ABN Amro hanged himself, but only after murdering his wife, Nally, and 22 year-ol daughter Babette. As Bloomberg reports, a farewell letter was found in the house, but authorities declined further comment on its contents. Schmittmann’s family was cited as saying in the statement that “we knew Jan Peter struggled with severe depression,” and added that their “first concern now is supporting the remaining daughter in coping with this indescribable grief.” Aweful…
De Telegraaf reported today that Schmittmann hanged himself, citing two people it didn’t identify.
Bloomberg explains Schmittmann’s history:
Schmittmann joined ABN Amro Holding NV, once among Europe’s biggest banks, in 1983 as an assistant relationship manager and was named head of the lender’s Dutch unit in 2003. As a member of the bank’s executive board, he was responsible for restructuring it along the lines agreed by Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, Fortis and Banco Santander SA in their three-way takeover of the lender in 2007.
A year after the biggest financial-services takeover in history, the credit crunch drove Fortis to the verge of collapse, forcing the Netherlands to take over its Dutch banking and insurance units, including assets of the former ABN Amro in 2008. The Dutch asked Gerrit Zalm to lead the company now called ABN Amro Group NV.
Read moreEx-ABN Amro CEO Killed Family Before Hanging Himself
Former CEO Of Dutch Bank ABN Amro (And His Wife And Daughter) Found Dead
–ABN Amro Ex-CEO Found Dead (ZeroHedge, April 6, 2014):
A mere two weeks since former JPMorgan banker, Kenneth Bellando jumped to his death, Bloomberg reports that the former CEO of Dutch Bank ABN Amro (and his wife and daughter) were found dead at their home after a possible “family tragedy.” This expands the dismal list of senior financial services executive deaths to 12 in the last few months. The 57-year-old Jan Peter Schmittmann, was reportedly discovered by his other daughter when she arrived home that morning. Police declined to comment on the cirumstances of his (and his wife and daughter’s) death. This is not the first C-level ABN Amro banker to be found dead. In 2009, former CFO Huibert Boumeester was discovered with (assumed self-inflicted) shotgun wounds.
Former ABN Amro Group NV Netherlands Chief Executive Officer Jan Peter Schmittmann, his wife and a daughter were found dead at their home today after a possible “family tragedy,” Dutch police said.
“The bodies of a father and mother and their daughter were found at the property” in the town of Laren, 32 kilometers (20 miles) southeast of Amsterdam, Dutch police said in a statement on their website today. Leonie Bosselaar, a police spokeswoman, said in a telephone call with Bloomberg News that the deceased were Schmittmann and two family members.
Read moreFormer CEO Of Dutch Bank ABN Amro (And His Wife And Daughter) Found Dead
UNPRECEDENTED Shortages Of Ammo, Physical Gold And Physical Silver
– UNPRECEDENTED Shortages Of Ammo, Physical Gold And Physical Silver (Economic Collapse, April 25, 2013):
All over the United States we are witnessing unprecedented shortages of ammunition, physical gold and physical silver. Recent events have helped fuel a “buying frenzy” that threatens to spiral out of control. Gun shops all over the nation are reporting that they have never seen it this bad, and in many cases any ammo that they are able to get is being sold even before it hits the shelves. The ammo shortage has already become so severe that police departments all over America are saying that they are being told that it is going to take six months to a year to get their orders. In fact, many police departments have begun to trade and barter with one another to get the ammo that they need. Meanwhile, the takedown of paper gold and paper silver has unleashed an avalanche of “panic buying” of physical gold and physical silver all over the planet. In the United States, some dealers are charging premiums of more than 25 percent over the spot price for gold and silver and they are getting it. People are paying these prices even though they are being told that delivery will not happen for a month or two in many cases. Some dealers are feverishly taking as many orders as they can, and they are just hoping that they will be able to get the physical gold and silver to eventually fill those orders. Personally, I have never seen anything like this. If things are this tight now, what is going to happen when the next major financial crisis strikes and people really begin to panic?
Read moreUNPRECEDENTED Shortages Of Ammo, Physical Gold And Physical Silver
Dutch Megabank ABN Amro To Halt Physical Gold Delivery – Another Gold Shortage?
– Another Gold Shortage? Dutch ABN To Halt Physical Gold Delivery (ZeroHedge, March 24, 2013):
Based on a letter to clients over the weekend, it appears Dutch megabank ABN Amro is changing its precious metals custodian rules and “will no longer allow physical delivery.” Have no fear, they reassuringly add, your account will be settled at the bid or offer price in the ‘market’ and “you need to do nothing” as “we have your investments in precious metals.”
Via Google Translate,
Changes in the handling of orders in bullion
On 1 April 2013,. ABN AMRO to another custodian for the precious metals gold, silver, platinum and palladium. This we your investments in precious metals otherwise handle and administer. In this letter you can read more about it.
Read moreDutch Megabank ABN Amro To Halt Physical Gold Delivery – Another Gold Shortage?
£30 billion loss at RBS prompts savage job cuts
ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND boss Stephen Hester is to unveil a brutal cost-cutting exercise, alongside record losses of close to £30 billion, that are expected to lead to a further 10,000 to 20,000 job cuts.
Hester has told his most senior lieutenants to draw up a new business plan, measured against five key financial metrics.
The move will lead to hundreds of millions being stripped from the bank’s global cost base over the next three to five years.
The project is also expected to see the bank exit a number of countries in emerging markets, and sell off dozens of businesses now deemed to be non-core.
RBS is considering selling off parts of ABN Amro that it acquired in 2007 as part of a three-way consortium with Spain’s Santander and Belgian bank Fortis.
It has already begun talks with the Dutch government, which may acquire certain operations in the Netherlands and parts of the group’s international operations.
Euro banks spread gloom as profits, forecasts fall
NP Paribas Chief Executive Officer Baudouin Prot speaks during a news conference to announce the bank’s third-quarter results in Paris November 5, 2008.
PARIS (Reuters) – A raft of European bank results did little to lift gloom around the sector on Wednesday, with a recurring trend of falling profits and rising bad debts stemming from the global financial crisis.
France’s biggest bank BNP Paribas (BNPP.PA: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) posted a 56 percent fall in third-quarter profits, Allied Irish Banks (ALBK.I: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) cut its earnings forecast, and Greece’s Emporiki Bank (CBGr.AT: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) swung to a loss.
Capital rebuilding continued in the face of a tough outlook as Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS.L: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) looked to raise up to 3 billion pounds ($4.7 billion) from a government-backed bond, and Austria’s Raiffeisen Zentralbank said it may ask the government for 2 billion euros ($2.6 billion).
By 7:15 a.m. EST the DJ Stoxx banking index was down 0.7 percent, led by 4 percent falls for BNP and Allied Irish.
Profits have tumbled across the sector, and several banks have warned of more writedowns and rising bad debts this year, though there is optimism that government rescue packages have left balance sheets strong enough to withstand more losses.
Financial Crisis: Fortis’ Dutch assets are nationalised
The Dutch operations of Fortis, Europe’s largest victim of the credit crisis, have been nationalised in a €16.8bn (£13bn) deal aimed to calm investors in the troubled banking and insurance group.
Fortis is Europe’s largest victim of the credit crisis Photo: AFP
The Netherlands government stepped in to take over the assets, including buying Fortis’ interest in ABN Amro – the Dutch investment bank it jointly acquired last year in a consortium with Royal Bank of Scotland and Banco Santander. Shares in Fortis have tumbled almost 70pc this year as fears mounted that it had overstretched itself through its €24bn participation in the ABN Amro transaction.
Yesterday’s deal replaces an agreement struck on Sunday by the Belgium, Dutch and Luxembourg governments to rescue Fortis by pumping €11.2bn into the Belgian-Dutch bank. Under that deal, they would have taken a 49pc stake in the bank’s operations within each of their borders.
Read moreFinancial Crisis: Fortis’ Dutch assets are nationalised
World economic crisis: France moves into recession
The French premier, Francois Fillon, today warned that the world was “on the edge of the abyss” as his country moved into an official recession.
Fillon’s comments, blaming an “irresponsible” financial system, came as the Dutch government seized control of bancassurer Fortis’s Netherlands operations in a €16.8bn (£13.06bn) deal greed with the Belgian and Luxembourg authorities.
The effective nationalisation, forced upon the governments by the scale of the financial meltdown, includes Fortis’s interests in Dutch bank ABN Amro.
The shock decision came just days after the three governments injected €11.2bn into Fortis, Belgium’s biggest bank, to keep it afloat.
GLOBAL ECONOMY – Factories hit worldwide as commodity prices soar
LONDON/TOKYO (Reuters) – Soaring commodity costs are denting manufacturing activity in Asia and Europe and the outlook looks bleak as new orders drop off in the face of rising prices, surveys showed on Tuesday.
Manufacturing activity in the euro zone contracted in June for the first time in three years while business confidence in Asia’s largest export markets is buckling and output has likely contracted further in the United States.
Purchasing managers indices showed manufacturing activity in the euro zone fell to 49.2 in June, China saw its index fall to a near three-year low of 52.0 while in Britain it contracted at its sharpest rate since December 2001.
The 50.0 mark separates growth from contraction. Factories worldwide have struggled in the face of soaring raw material and energy costs — oil hit over $143 a barrel on Monday.
Meanwhile, the Bank of Japan’s tankan corporate index of big manufacturers’ sentiment dropped to plus 5, from 11 in March, showing their mood has not been darker since 2003.
Read moreGLOBAL ECONOMY – Factories hit worldwide as commodity prices soar
Fortis Bank Predicts US Financial Market Meltdown Within Weeks
BRUSSELS / AMSTERDAM (DFT) – Fortis expects within the next few days to weeks to complete the collapse of the U.S. financial markets.
That explains the bank insurers interventions of the series Thursday at dealing with € 8 billion.
“We are ready at the last minute. It goes in the United States much worse than thought, “said Fortis chairman Maurice Lippens, who maintains that CEO Votron to live. Fortis expects bankruptcies of 6000 U.S. banks that now lack coverage. “But Citigroup, General Motors, there begins a complete meltdown in the U.S..”
Fortis took yesterday € 1.5 billion with a share issue. At the end of last year was the Belgian-Dutch group € 13 billion of new shares for the takeover of ABN Amro, for which it paid € 24 billion. Lippens bases its concern on interviews with bankers. “Two months ago we knew not so bad that it is in America. And it will be much worse. We have a thick mattress needed for the next eighteen months to come when we can bring to ABN Amro. ”
Two weeks ago reported the U.S. investment bank and adviser to Fortis Merrill Lynch certainly € 6.2 billion in additional capital was needed. The VEB yesterday demanded clarification of Fortis: CEO Jean-Paul Votron stopped in late april Fortis maintains that after the purchase of ABN Amro does not need on the capital market. In one year € 30 billion in market capitalization destroyed. After Votron last confession kelderde the share price by 19.4%, although yesterday climbed by 4.4% to € 10.65.
The massive unrest around the bank insurers, especially with our neighbours in Belgium as a bomb broken. While the fuss arose in the Netherlands to the limited financial world, it is with our neighbours the call of the day. Not only is the bank dominates the streetscape, but by the mokerslag for the Belgian volksaandeel are also hundreds of thousands of small investors hit hard.
All Belgian newspapers opened yesterday with real rampenkoppen, where the free fall of the bank insurers was wide coverage. ‘Fortis crashes, “” Rampdag for Fortis’ and’ Fortis loses 5.3 billion, “opened three leading newspapers.
Read moreFortis Bank Predicts US Financial Market Meltdown Within Weeks