Delay in UK bailout to prolong depression

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Stephen Pope of Cantor Fitzgerald Europe said, "The UK government has offered this injection and the number if the banks RBS, HBOS and Lloyds said that we will take it. Then there is all this quibbling about the rate that will be paid on the preference shares. But no money has actually gone into those banks at the current time.in the UK." He adds that the longer the dillydallying takes place to inject capital in ailing banks, the longer the depression will be.

 

Here is a verbatim transcript of Stephen Pope's interview on CNBC-TV18. Also watch the accompanying video.

 

Q: What is the sentiment on the street like right now and does it seem like there would be something that would bring interest back into the equity markets?

 

A: Most of the European Indices are anywhere between 4.5% down to heading towards 6.5% down. So, there is chaos out there.

 

I cannot say if this is the final capitulation move. I thought it was a couple of weeks ago and I was wrong. If you look across European sectors, nothing is up apart from one thing - automobiles. That is Volkswagen because Porsche announced today that they have increased their holding to 42% and then in 2009 they are going to go up to around 75%. So the stock has just leapt forward like a crazy thing. Volkswagen is a standout instrument on its own and has its own reasons for the behaviour.

 

But if you look across the European indices, everything is heavily down. Manufacturing is off by 9.7%; mining is down by 7.5%. In the UK, the banks that signed up to this government money, but nothing has been signed with the government yet. No injections have been made. The longer they dillydally and don't do anything, the worse the depression will be here.

 

Q: Are you getting a sense right now that a lot of the hedge funds across Europe are pressing sell aggressively?

 

A: We are in a situation where a couple of weeks ago, people were just saying sell, get me out at any price. I mean if they want to go buy Volkswagen, because it is just a crazy situation at the current time, people are trying to get out and don't have any risk appetite at the moment. Somebody somewhere is going to make a very big killing out of this market because they will pick up stock of fine companies that operate on a global basis with good products to sell. They will be at rockbottom prices, but if you are a brave person who'd call what day that will be.

 

Q: You were completing your argument about governments not actually doing the fund infusion that they policy-wise decided to do. Is that what the markets would be waiting for? If that happened, would you see some kind of more thawing of credit markets? One thought that credit markets were already thawing last week.

 

A: One has seen this ease-up in the interbank markets, certainly the dollar rates were coming down, so TED spreads shrank, and in terms of the sterling three-month LIBOR,  it was falling too. So when you divide that by base rate, that was coming off quite nicely too, but not fast enough.

 

Now what you would find is, the government in the UK for example has offered this injection and the number if the banks RBS, HBOS and Lloyds said that we will take it. Then there is all this quibbling about the rate that will be paid on the preference shares. But no money has actually gone into those banks at the current time.

 

Then of course we have the government saying that they are going to borrow a lot more. But there is this endless argument about how much is UK national debt? So at the moment, in UK's case, there is a lot of confusion.

 

There is frustration that the money that was promised is not going into the banks as quickly as it should. If it starts to happen then one would see the banking sector would stabilise, and if they will start lending not just to the small business and each other, but also down to the man in the street, that would be helpful.