European Lenders Get Bailouts as U.S. Crisis Spreads

 European governments stepped in to rescue Fortis, Bradford & Bingley Plc, and Hypo Real Estate Holding AG as tremors from the U.S. credit crisis reverberated around the world.

The U.K. Treasury seized Bradford & Bingley, Britain's biggest lender to landlords, while governments in Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg threw an 11.2 billion-euro ($16.3 billion) lifeline to Fortis. Germany guaranteed a loan to Hypo.

The interventions exposed how fallout from the crisis that drove Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. into bankruptcy and prompted a $700 billion U.S. bank-rescue package has gone global. It also added urgency to negotiations among European policy makers as to how they deal with banking collapses.

Shares of Dexia SA, a lender based in both Brussels and Paris, fell as much as 33 percent in Brussels trading after Le Figaro said the world's biggest lender to local governments may soon announce a plan to raise capital. Iceland agreed to buy 75 percent in Glitnir Bank hf, the island nation's third-largest bank by market value, for 600 million euros.

European equities and U.S. stock-index futures fell today. Euro-area economic confidence dropped this month to the lowest since the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks amid concern that the U.S. plan will fail to stem the crisis. The pound tumbled by the most against the dollar in 15 years and the euro slid.

The European Central Bank said today it will make additional funds available to banks through the end of the year in ``special'' auctions to ease tensions in money markets. The cost of borrowing euros for three months soared to a record 5.24 percent today. The Libor-OIS spread, a gauge of cash availability among banks, widened to a record 219 basis points.

Tightening credit is casting a pall over the European economy with U.K. growth the weakest since the early 1990s and the 15-nation euro-area on the edge of its first recession. The risk is of a spiral in which the credit crisis and the economy begin to feed off each other, resulting in costlier borrowing and even weaker expansion.

To head off the collapse of its biggest bank, Belgium agreed to buy 49 percent of Fortis's Belgian banking unit for 4.7 billion euros, while the Netherlands will pay 4 billion euros for a similar stake in the Dutch business, the governments said in a statement late yesterday. Luxembourg will provide a 2.5 billion-euro loan convertible into 49 percent of Fortis's banking division in that country.

The talks to rescue Fortis involved European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet. Former Bank of England policy maker Willem Buiter said today on his blog that the rescue of Fortis showed ``the ability of the euro-area fiscal authorities to coordinate on a bailout for a bank with not only strong cross-boundary operations, but indeed with a strong multi- national identity.''

Bradford & Bingley was saved as tighter credit made it impossible for it to operate. Deposits at the bank amounted to slightly more than half of its loans outstanding, forcing it to depend on frozen capital markets for support. Banco Santander, Spain's biggest lender, will pay 612 million pounds ($1.1 billion), including a transfer of 208 million pounds of capital, to buy its branches and deposits.

Hypo Real Estate, Germany's second-biggest commercial- property lender, received a 35 billion euro loan guarantee to fend of insolvency. The rescuers of the bank will pay the guarantee cash in two allotments of 14 billion euros and 21 billion euros, a government official said, speaking on terms of anonymity.

Roskilde Bank A/S, the lender bailed out by the Danish central bank because of mortgage writedowns, said today it sold its branches to Nordea Bank AB, Spar Nord Bank A/S and Arbejdernes Landsbank A/S.