The numbers are larger than at Bramdean – the lie is the same:
Intensive due diligence is vital to ensuring the integrity and sustainability of the investment process . . . Each investment undergoes lengthy and detailed scrutiny according to clearly defined manager selection criteria.
The website on which this lie was printed has been pulled.
As the FT points out it was impossible to do due diligence on your Madoff investments because Bernie did not allow it. But Santander claimed they did it as did certain other fund-of-fund businesses.
There is however much bigger consequences to Santander being caught in a lie. Santander – as do almost all English speaking banks – needs to raise money in wholesale markets.
Raising money depends on trust and as Jim Grant has just pointed out (and as this blog has pointed out several times) there is currently a “bear market in trust”.
If the trust in Santander fails then Santander fails. And that would be a very big piece of Bernie Madoff collateral damage.
J
5 comments:
You may find this tool fun. http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.bramdean.com/
the way back machine tries to keep things from going down the memory hole.
Banco Santander has managed to alienate just about everybody in the last couple of months.
1). Retail customers, by surreptitiously selling them Lehman paper when they had been looking to buy term deposits;
2). Shareholders, with the 25% dilution;
3). Family and friends, the domestic oligarchy whose money they placed with Madoff. Botín father, son and daughter implicated in this last through two banks and one investment manager.
I used to be a fan.
Happy holidays.
There was another FT article where it looks like a 65 year old money manager, who apparently placed 1,400 million dollars with Madoff, committed suicide.
Involuntary manslaughter charges seem not entirely inappropriate.
Charles- I had noticed Santander's behaviour.
The hedgie who topped himself ran a 100% Madoff feeder.
To run one of those required either willful ignorance or some other kind of self deception - or you needed to be totally corrupt. I suspect that willful self-deception is the main game.
Willful self deception can be rough when it comes crashing down.
J
Charles, you forgot to mention other Spanish banks --- didn't Santander piss off the competition with it's relatively large rights issue? As Bear found out, it can be bad not to have allies if things turn sour...
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