estimated investors' losses at about $50 billion

[Purple Dalek]

paying themselves large bonusses

It’s just more evidence of the endemic incompetence at senior levels in the banking industry. I don’t have the solution but it seems to me that there needs to be a massive management clear-out among the banks as the people who’ve been running them up to now clearly aren’t morally or intellectually equipped for the responsibility of looking after other people’s money.

Agree with that. I've seen many a good quality engineering firm, just nicely ticking along, making a good, but not spectacular profit each year, get a few MBAs on board, a few years of spectacular growth followed by a stunning collapse.

I take it as an anti-pattern: watch the company reports, the 'pictures of the board' section, the company has kindly looking elder engineers on the board, you notice they're gradually replaced by some gelled haired MBA freaks, this implies a company that will make good money until the last kindly elderly type is gone, then sell, 'cause they'll fail soon.

[AtW]

And guess who had $3.1bn invested in this Ponzi scheme... Santander.

Linky maybe?

If they did so then they would certainly be retarted.

RBS appears to have lost £400 mln (just heard it on BBC)

[DiscoStu]

Linky maybe?

If they did so then they would certainly be retarted.

RBS appears to have lost £400 mln (just heard it on BBC)

Certainly

[AtW]

Certainly

The only sentence mentioning that spanish bank is: "Spanish newspapers said the leading bank Santander had invested with Mr Madoff." - where did you get $3 bln from? It would sound to be as rather too high amount.

RBS info - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/n...ged-fraud.html

I would not be suprised if Santander lost 400-500, but $3 bln would seem excessive and should have never passed risk controls.

[DiscoStu]

Oops, wrong link...

Try here

[AtW]

Oops, wrong link...

Try here

"Santander customers have $3.1 billion exposure to Madoff"

This means customers of Santander (the bank) have the exposure, not (necesserily) Santander (the bank) itself. Who taught you English language? I don't ask who taught you logic because clearly it was nobody

"The Santander group has a proprietary exposure of 17 million euros through another investment fund."

So whole of Santander group (via 3rd party) only exposed to 17 mln euros, not a high number considering RBS was done for £400 mln - this only confirms my original view that Santander is a very good conservative bank, in this huge scam they got low exposure though their customers might have been pretty stupid, but that's not banks fault (unless they advised customers to invest there).

[AtW]

Oops, wrong link...

Try here

Oh where are you now?

Searching frantically for a new link?

[swamp]

If the world's top investors get caught out by a dodgy pyramid scheme you really have to question whether there are any financial experts out there. I reckon they're all a bunch of chancers.

[DiscoStu]

So you'd be happy to use a bank that advised its customers to invest in a Ponzi scheme?

[AtW]

you really have to question whether there are any financial experts out there.

There are a few on this forum.