Kleinwort end deposits in Jersey
Tuesday 6th July 2010, 3:00PM BST.
Peter Neville, chairman of Kleinwort Benson (Channel Islands) Ltd, Angus Taylor, managing director of Kleinwort Benson (Channel Islands) Ltd and Richard Robins, chairman of Kleinwort Benson Channel Islands Holdings Ltd
THE deal that led to the loss of 30 jobs in Jersey at banking group Kleinwort Benson was completed last week.
German giant Commerzbank has sold Kleinwort – one of the oldest names in the City – to Belgian company RHJ International.
That firm is not one of the world’s top 500 banks, and as a result, Jersey’s financial regulator refused to grant a licence to the new owners to take deposits in the Island.
The Jersey Financial Services Commission refused to bow to pressure to grant a licence despite Kleinwort arguing for an exemption. As a result, the firm’s deposit-taking operation has been moved to Guernsey.
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Well the rules are everything, never mind the fact that the bank received an excellent rating by Moodys, its not in the top 500 so it must go. We can of course afford the luxury of such actions with no deficit to plug, oh sorry I forgot the reduced number of banks to regulate will result in a reduction in staff at the JFSC….Our loss Guernsey’s gain and not one of our politicians defended this!
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Many congratulations to our bureaucratic Jersey financial services dept and Mr phillip Ozouf for driving Kleinwort Benson over to Guernsey.We all know the new owners are not in the top 500 so what!!!.Hope the 30 people have long memories when it comes to election time
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Many of the top 500 got us all into trouble in the first place. Their greed made them go for transaction s that made them incredibly rich and caused us to suffer the current economic crisis. So why is it so important to have ONLY those top 500 ? I am all for banks get more regulated but in a way VERY different from what JFSC is suggesting, because that is laughable. The big crooks still make it. It’s about time JFSC demands bank to be more moral or leave – at which point they admit themselves they were not moral in the first place, of course.
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I understand that that there are some services within the KB office in Jersey that were outsourced to the Guernsey some time ago for cost/resource reasons.
Now, given the treatment that the new owners RHJ International have had with JFSC, I expect that they will have a much stronger tendancy to develop their business through their Guernsey offices. Who wouldn’t?
So the true cost of this JFSC cock up for Jersey is yet to be known and could be very substantial.
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This is another non-story. The size of this deal would mean that the buyers RHJ International would have carried out extensive due diligence involving Jersey lawyers. RHJ would have known long before handing over the money that the chances of getting a banking licence in Jersey were close to non-existent. If the JFSC exempted them it would have exposed itself to claims from every other bank who has applied and been turned down over the years. Interestingly Guernsey and Isle of Man that don’t have this hurdle both suffered recent banking failures leaving local depositors out of pocket. JFSC would probably argue that this is proof that the policy is effective.
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@4 Jon
It’s not as if KB even own the building that they operate from anymore…
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Well done JFSC for making 30 more people redundant at a time when the unemployment figure is already at an all time high. I’m sure that with work now being undertaken in Guernsey that more redundancies are likely. The new owners surely can now only focus on expanding the business there. Word is that this is already in the process with yet more redundancies to come.
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Game over … Jersey, if you carry on like this.
#5 – You really don’t understand the international finance industry. I suspect that you are referring to the Icelandic banks, in which case there is a long list of Jersey residents who lost out. This is a big story, 30 people lost jobs.
Jersey cannot afford to be a prima donna in the offshore world anymore.
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