Uk Overview

摘要

The past two months have seen the global financial crisis intensify. The latest wave of the credit crunch began with the collapse of Lehman Brothers and was followed by a number of state bailouts of financial institutions. In the UK equity prices have been exceptionally volatile and the situation came to a head in the week beginning 6th October when speculation that several banks had approached the government for funding sent their share prices into a steep decline. The FTSE100 fell by more than 7% on 6th October, while shares in RBS declined by more than 50% over two days. Interbank lending had practically ground to a halt, with markets worried that banks' balance sheets were too weak to withstand further losses.