WHEN your life savings – or, worse, those of your parents – are invested in a finance centre where the regulator has assured you that its primary objective is to regulate and supervise financial services with integrity and efficiency and in so doing help to uphold its international reputation, external events pale into insignificance.
What is crucially important is, firstly, whether you will get your money back and, at a distant second, to question how it could have been put at risk in the first place.
It is clear from unfolding events yesterday, however, that neither element will be addressed in Guernsey any time soon. Equally clear from the anguished calls received by this newspaper is how many decent people have possibly lost so much money and how badly they feel let down by the wall of silence from those who should be trying to help them.
No one doubts that we are living through history being made and everyone understands global events are in train and that the very real risk of a complete collapse of the world’s financial system can be averted only by governments acting in concert.
But when the thousands you invested on behalf of your parents’ retirement is now at risk in Landsbanki Guernsey, it is not surprising, as one investor said yesterday, that some are feeling suicidal. Others are too devastated even to tell partners and loved ones that a lifetime’s nest egg has been lodged with a faltering bank.
Yet the people who were so eager to take those funds – and to provide recent reassurance that nothing could happen to Landsbanki here or in Iceland – are now curiously silent, something the affected investors have taken as the ultimate insult.
And while what the FT described as the UK’s actions to prevent a banking collapse has yet to have any long-term effect on confidence, it has had an unintended effect here.
While the eight institutions named in the UK’s rescue package can extend that cover to the Bailiwick, that has actually increased the doubt about the other banks here in Guernsey that are authorised to take money.
For too many islanders, the doubts about the safety of their savings remain.
Article posted on 9th October, 2008 - 2.00pm
Rescue does not remove all doubts
WHEN your life savings – or, worse, those of your parents – are invested in a finance centre where the regulator has assured you that its primary objective is to regulate and supervise financial services with integrity and efficiency and in so doing help to uphold its international reputation, external events pale into insignificance.
What is crucially important is, firstly, whether you will get your money back and, at a distant second, to question how it could have been put at risk in the first place.
It is clear from unfolding events yesterday, however, that neither element will be addressed in Guernsey any time soon. Equally clear from the anguished calls received by this newspaper is how many decent people have possibly lost so much money and how badly they feel let down by the wall of silence from those who should be trying to help them.
No one doubts that we are living through history being made and everyone understands global events are in train and that the very real risk of a complete collapse of the world’s financial system can be averted only by governments acting in concert.
But when the thousands you invested on behalf of your parents’ retirement is now at risk in Landsbanki Guernsey, it is not surprising, as one investor said yesterday, that some are feeling suicidal. Others are too devastated even to tell partners and loved ones that a lifetime’s nest egg has been lodged with a faltering bank.
Yet the people who were so eager to take those funds – and to provide recent reassurance that nothing could happen to Landsbanki here or in Iceland – are now curiously silent, something the affected investors have taken as the ultimate insult.
And while what the FT described as the UK’s actions to prevent a banking collapse has yet to have any long-term effect on confidence, it has had an unintended effect here.
While the eight institutions named in the UK’s rescue package can extend that cover to the Bailiwick, that has actually increased the doubt about the other banks here in Guernsey that are authorised to take money.
For too many islanders, the doubts about the safety of their savings remain.
Article posted on 9th October, 2008 - 2.00pm