The chief executive of Sweden’s biggest pension company has been fired after it lost £1.5bn in the recent US banking crisis.
Magnus Billing is leaving Alecta with immediate effect, the company said.
His abrupt exit comes after the pension provider last month revealed it had lost 19.6bn Swedish crowns (£1.5bn) on investments in Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), First Republic Bank and Signature Bank, three lenders at the heart of last month’s US banking crisis.
It’s why so much of the German banking system went bust in 2008……
German Landesbanken, Swiss Cantonal banks, Lehmann, Bear Sterns, Salomon, Savings and Loans, Continental, HBOS, Nat West, Northern Rock…
Trying to stop bank failures does seem like a slow motion whack-a-mole.
Investing in one bank is a mistake. Investing in 3 is stupidity
In a society like the US that depends on subtle, and not so subtle, webs of corruption, and on a federal system of government, the ignorant outsider is at a disadvantage.
DM – Europeans being so naive they’re basically too stupid to live?
That’s unpossible.
Is there a basis for a long-term investment system here? That is, look for weaknesses in your own domestic banks and opportunities to short those banks, because their share price will be inflated by foreign money ignorant of those weaknesses? Perhaps there is something about banking which is complex enough to reward that certain ‘feeling in your water’ where you know that something is not right, but which is less of an issue with more straightforward businesses?
I suppose in the short term it’s a risky strategy, because the share price will indeed be artificially supported by this foreign money. But in the long term, if your own local knowledge is correct, the banks in question will be found out.
Tuesday’s Times: Marshall Wace builds the biggest short position in NatWest on record
https://archive.ph/dbG7F
With the rather wonderful name Magnus Billing, he should have opted to become a lawyer.