I had the pleasure of being on Newstalk last week with Eamon Keane and during our brief chat I had mentioned that banks are lending out money cheaper than they can buy it, this was mentioned back to me by a client and he wanted to know if it was simply a slip of the tongue, because banks of course, do not lend money at a loss.
In fact that is precisely what is happening at the moment because the 3 month Euribor – which is the rate banks generally are buying their money at- is at 4.742%. Several banks are lending at less than this price namely NIB, Halifax, Bank of Scotland, Bank of Ireland and PTsb. So how is this happening? How can any CEO let their institution lend money at a price that will cause shareholder loss?
I suppose it’s down to a few factors, firstly banks don’t HAVE to buy money at the 3 month Euribor rate, they may be operating on the 1 month money which is currently selling at 4.349%, or they may be …