What is going on at Dexia? 46 year old CEO Stefaan Decraene to depart
Monday, 5 September 2011 | 
John A Morrison
Stefaan Decraene, the CEO of Dexia Bank Belgium and member of the Executive Committee of Dexia Group, will leave the company. The 46-year-old Decraene who ran Dexia Bank Belgium for over five years will leave the group for an international job in another bank. There are strong indications that he is switching to the French financial giant BNP Paribas, the parent of Dexia's rival Fortis. The departure of Decraene, number two at the top of Dexia, is a new blow to the embattled group.
Jos Clijsters by the board of directors was appointed new CEO of Dexia Bank Belgium. The press release states that the long experience of Clijsters in the industry and his knowledge of Dexia guarantee the continuity and development of the Bank for serving its clients.
The 61-year-old Clijsters started in January 2011 at Dexia as a consultant, after a track record of 30 years at Fortis. Previously, the Leuven born was a member of the executive and standing committees at Fortis. As CEO of Fortis Retail Banking hevdeveloped the international business and made acquisitions in Poland, Turkey, Ireland and Germany.
The new function of Decraene at BNP Paribas is not known, but apparently he is situated at the group level and not at the Belgian level. It can not be ruled out that he is responsible for all retail activities of the French group, succeeding Jean-Laurent Bonnafé.
Operationally the company is doing well, but the legacy of the past and especially the large portfolio of government securities in the PIGS countries, and the liquidity situation oare concerns.
THIS IS A LONG SERIES OF COMMENTS AND BLOGS ABOUT DEXIA & ITS DEVELOPING STORY
READ ON BELOW
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Comments
Dexia Rescue Riskier than it Looks
Wallooning debts
REUTERS BREAKING VIEWS
Moody's reviews Belgian regions for downgrade
CANADIAN BUSINESS
RBC seeks buyout of Dexia joint venture
CBC NEWS
Dexia is not about Dexia; the final EuroZone line in the sand
Dexia Again / Monday Morning 10th October '11
CURRENT POSITION
The lack of clarity, the lack of transparency over DEXIA overnight and this morning (e.g. right now we dont even know if the stock will open) is DISGRACEFUL in the current environment; we were told that bank staff would work within parameters established by the Belgian, French and LU governments and that a detailed agreement would be published last night. That has not happened, REUTERS are reporting this is because Dexia bank staff are challenging the framework from the BE, LU, FR 'Council of Ministers'. That doesn't sound right to me. We should not blame the news media speculation, it's not their fault, there is no clarity from the governments or from the bank; but be clear the responsibility for transparency is with the governments, that means YOU; Didier Reynders! The performance of the temporary ("affaires courant") and incoming Belgian governments in regard to DEXIA is now and has been absolutely disgraceful, given the politically intertwined nature of government and banking in Belgium, the politicians must have known this was coming down the road. The incoming government members are behaving like a bunch of schoolgirls squabbling over nonsense as their banking system collapses and they don't even have the decency to explain the truth to their people who have waited more than a year for a government; its disgraceful! Nothing Short! I am indignant! The Belgian people deserve to be told clearly and transparently what the exposure of the BE govt to DBB (Dexia Bank Belgium) and the Dexia bad bank will be; the deals on the Luxembourg assets and the French assets are peripheral and irrelevant.
WIDER EUROPEAN CONTEXT of DEXIA problem
It looks to me as if the French and Belgian governments are trying to "jump the queue" for "EFSF+" money even before the EFSF has been enlarged i.e. they are trying to neatly shoe-horn the rescue of Dexia into the European bank recapitalization programme which will be performed by the enlarged EFSF. The enlarged EFSF does not exist yet, there are already sequentially prior claims on an enlarged EFSF out there, they have been around for months but it looks as if Dexia will get priority. This is underhand behavior by France and Belgium. If the French and German governments do jump the EFSF+ queue that means they are saying "Too hell with Greece" & Spain and Italy, effectively, we will look after our own bent corrupt financial institutions first with any money we can gather from around the Euro Zone. On the back of Dexia the EFSF is becoming a private slush fund for Sarkozy and a bunch of Belgians "schoolgirls" squabbling about entitlements; handing a massive EU safety on a plate to 4m customers who have 80bn euro on deposit (work it out)! [But was not the EU ever thus no matter what Barrosso or RumpyPump meander on about? - crooked bent slush funds]! Understand people Dexia is not about Greek sovereign exposure its about Belgian and French negligence and greed; their fantasies of avarice are far worse than the indignation of Occupy Brussels, morally! In fact Dexia is not about Dexia, in my view; its about Europe, its about Spain and Italy, Greece, Ireland, Dexia is the final EuroZone line in the sand!
Jumping the EFSF q: (before its capitalized) 3D diplomatic chess
LINK bit.ly/qpTJ1f (h/t Cate Long): [3D diplomatic chess] LeMonde blogs of course the best insider on diplomacy in the world .....
La Belgique a nationalisé Dexia Banque
La Belgique a nationalisé Dexia Banque et endossé le reste du groupe
from Les Echo Belgique 07:01 - 10 octobre 2011 par C.d.C, Ch.Sch., D.Li., K.T., A-S.B. & F.Re.
Dexia What is it worth? They haven’t got a cloooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Sunday morning 9th October '11
There is a lot of confusion on twitter (& elsewhere 'out there') as to what Dexia is actually worth this morning, that is what are the numbers the politicians are playing with in Paris at breakfast this morning. They range from a Scottish investment analyst who doesn't seem very brite thinking that its balance sheet is €566bn & comparing that to Lehman's b/s at $639bn. (both numbers are arid accounting values and bear no resemblance to reality)! Even the great Zerohedge made a howler (later corrected at the sycophantic prompt of another Scotsman) with a mistake in the headline of his Dexia 'funeral' blog confusing Slovenia and 'Slovakia'; easy for an American but the difference between Slovenia and Slovakia is Trillions of euros in Europe. But Associated France Press should have known better when they got all rapped up in arithmetic knots with their estimation; AFP estimated the price for the bank between 3 billion and 7.5 billion euros ($4 billion to $10 billion)!! Easy Now! Settle!
There is as usual a lot of ersatz re-hash after the fact and in doing that a lot of numpties are missing the point that they are re-hacking estimates from value analytics which are getting very "lost in translation" between the French and the Flemish and the English domination (which the Belgians in particular detest) & in this instance is the kimono they don't want lifted so I will try to shine a light ..
But a research paper from ULB did estimate the bad bank at "les garanties pour le portefeuille non-négligeable de 95 milliards d'actifs toxiques"; a further piece by REUTERS (from that research) went on to specify that the bad bank will include 12 billion euros of sovereign debt of weaker euro zone periphery nations & Including 7 billion euros of securities linked to U.S. mortgages, France and Belgium may need to provide guarantees to cover up to 200 billion euros of assets, which would be more than 55 percent of Belgian GDP. It is interesting that these Dexia figures are consistent with headline estimates of Belgian government total exposure to Dexia of 100 billion euro or as we used to say in Glasgow, "thereabouts"!
RBC DEXIA BLOWING UP in SPECTACULAR FASHION
GLOBE AND MAIL
Well informed as one would expect; The Sanfrancisco Chronicle
Montreal Gazette
Why RBC may want to take a pass on Dexia
STRATFOR ANALYSIS OF DEXIA
VIA CATE LONG
QUOTATION
Read more: Portfolio: Dexia Bank's Collapse and the European Financial Crisis | STRATFOR
Dexia commits to clean-up
REUTERS
EXCLUSIF. La banque Dexia vendue à la découpe (Le Point)
,,,, too late ,,,,,, far too late .......
DEXIA is in serious trouble, lets face it
If I was I was a stock analyst wrting a synthetic brief of the reports cited blelow, its conclusions would not be pretty. I recommend you read them all since each individually does not 'join all the dots' i.e. the sum of the parts constructs a picture of a great hole (sic); [seriously what would concern me in a macro / micro extrapolation in the context of Belgium's current political position is the nature of the Dexia exposure].
AFP
REUTERS
BLOOMBERG
BELGIUM IS A FISCAL DISASTER
the other side of the coin on asymptotix
DEXIA some current analysis September 2011
Dexia's Sinister Reality (ZeroHedge)
The danger of the Basel fallacy (Business Day)
European Bank Exposure to GIPs (Fitch)
The 20 banks most exposed to the European debt crisis
Dexia Israel to be sold "even at a loss"
Jean-Luc Dehaene (Wiki-P)
Dexia Price -3M Euroinvestor
http://www.euroinvestor.co.uk/stock/chart.aspx?id=344302#InstrumentId=34...
Appointment of Jos Clijsters as chairman of the Management Board
Stefaan Decraene, member of the Management Board of Dexia SA and Chairman of the Management Board of Dexia Bank Belgium, has informed Jean-Luc Dehaene, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Dexia SA, and Pierre Mariani, Chairman of the Management Board of Dexia
SA, of his decision to leave the group and to take up an international responsibility in another bank.Jean-Luc Dehaene and Pierre Mariani have proposed, to the Board of Directors of Dexia Bank Belgium, the nomination of Jos Clijsters, advisor of the Management Board of Dexia SA, as
Chairman of the Management Board of Dexia Bank Belgium. The board has approved this proposal that had been previously validated by the Belgian Minister of Finance, the Central Bank and the Authority for Financial Services and Markets (FSMA). The board of directors regrets but respects the decision of Stefaan Decraene and thanks him for his engagement. The long lasting experience in the financial sector of Jos Clijsters as well as his knowledge of Dexia will guarantee the continuity of the bank’s development, at the service of its clients.Additionally, at the same Board of Directors, the appointment of Marc Lauwers, member of the Management Board of Dexia Bank Belgium and responsible for the Retail and Commercial Banking activities, as Vice-President of the Management Board of Dexia Bank Belgium has been approved.
http://www.dexia.com/EN/journalist/press_releases/Documents/CP_20110905_UK.pdf