Latest news with #bailout
Reuters
19-07-2025
- Business
- Reuters
James Graham on why the 2008 crash still defines our politics
Few British institutions have escaped James Graham's spotlight. The British playwright's 2017 West End hit 'Ink' examined Rupert Murdoch's Sun newspaper and the rise of tabloid journalism in Britain. Two years later came 'Brexit: The Uncivil War,' a televised drama dissecting the personalities and strategies behind Brexit's victorious Vote Leave campaign. In his acclaimed 2024 show 'Dear England,' Graham turned to soccer, telling the story of former England manager Gareth Southgate and the men's national team's impact on the country's psyche. In his forthcoming show 'Make It Happen,' starring "Succession" actor Brian Cox, Graham sets his sights on the Royal Bank of Scotland — which claimed one of the world's largest bailouts after collapsing under risky investments — and its role in the 2008 financial crash, the consequences of which he says remain acutely felt today. 'I've always been obsessed by that moment and why it happened,' he tells Reuters from Edinburgh, where the show is set to open on July 30. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Why tell the story of the 2008 crash now, and why through the Royal Bank of Scotland? I guess I feel the paralysis that a lot of people feel politically and culturally at the moment. Every 25 to 30 years, the West tends to go through these momentous moments of reset and rebirth. A new contract emerges from the collapse of one era and you arrive at a consensus in another one, whether that's World War II or the fall of the Berlin Wall. That didn't happen in 2008. It felt like we limped through the crisis and no new idea, no new proposition, emerged. Seventeen years on, we're still living in the shadow of that huge crisis — whether that was the decade of austerity in the UK or the stagnation in our politics (and) our public life that led to Brexit or (Donald) Trump in the U.S. I can't take any credit for the Scottish angle. The National Theatre of Scotland came to me to suggest the frame of the Royal Bank of Scotland, which was at the time the biggest bank in the world (and) therefore needed the biggest bailout. Brian Cox came onboard and suggested that if we're going to do it as a Scottish story, to go all the way back to the Scottish Enlightenment and Adam Smith and the birth of this idea of free markets and modern-day capitalism. What was your experience of the crash like? I just moved to London. I was in my early 20s and I was finding my feet. I was very economically insecure, doing lots of part-time work in bars and factories and warehouses, trying to make my way as a writer. So I remember feeling quite a selfish, immediate fear. We'd been promised that this was the end of history and that everything was inevitably going to be a linear advancement towards progress and improvement. I remember having a visceral reaction — what is this going to mean for the arts, for theatre? I had no idea the longer, bigger crises and anger that was going to be coming down the line. It felt like a very American story: Lehman Brothers and images of people walking out of downtown Wall Street with boxes in their hands. I never saw Edinburgh Castle or Arthur's Seat or statues of Adam Smith, and I think that (Edinburgh) really was the epicenter of this — certainly for the UK, but for the world. All roads now, to me, clearly lead to that city. You credit Cox for bringing Adam Smith into the show. How does he feature? When he first said Adam Smith should be in it, we were having dinner, and it was the first time I'd ever met him. I didn't think he meant literally; I just thought it was Adam Smith's ideas, and I was like, well yeah sure, he's the father of modern economics. Of course he's going to be in it. And he went: 'No, no — in it as a character, and I want to play him.' I like looking at systems and processes and making sense of them in quite a literal, often humdrum way. So having this sort of magical quality in what I thought was going to be a play about corporate banking in Scotland immediately shocked me but rocked me in a great way. It expanded it into something slightly more operatic and gothic and mythic, and I think Edinburgh demands that in a way. It's a city full of ghosts; it's haunted. Its neoclassical architecture demands a drama of scale and of opera and of theatre. So I ran off with that and thought well of course, I can have Adam Smith appear as a ghost that's going to torture (former RBS chief) Fred Goodwin and challenge him about whether Adam Smith's ideas about markets and government regulations and capital and wealth have been misappropriated and weaponized. It's Dickensian, it's Greek. Edinburgh as a canvas gives you that permission to do something quite overtly theatrical. I was really grateful that Brian gave me what I thought initially was a really shit idea because it liberated me from men in suits talking about CDOs and futures. How do you think Scottish audiences will receive this story? I think about that a lot because the people in Edinburgh have to necessarily be a kind of character in it. I come from a mining village in Nottinghamshire of which there was one single industry and that was the mines and the pits. And when they closed, it felt like everybody was a character in that story, whether you worked down the pit or didn't. And it got to the point in which RBS — as a lender and a creditor but also as an employer and a symbol of Scottishness and of Edinburgh — turned the capital of Scotland into the capital of capital. It meant everybody was involved in that story, possibly in an uncomfortable way. Like all of us, we asked the question: In what way were we all complicit? Clearly, this was too good to be true and no one questioned it and we were very happy to take those mortgages when they were available to us. I'm fascinated to see the response from people in that city. I hope this is an empathetic way to look at what people understandably find a quite difficult chapter in their history. After dramatizing the works of Parliament, England's Football Association (FA), and now the banks, which institution do you think is the most broken? It's certainly not the FA. What I find really inspiring about the (former England manager) Gareth Southgate story is it's almost the one singular example I can find in our national life over the past 10 years where an individual or a group has gone into a place and recognized its flaws and its weaknesses but also seen its potential and its opportunity. I know he's got his detractors because he didn't win the World Cup, but he took something that everyone was feeling really bad about and that was in a pretty constant decline and went on the most successful regeneration that's ever happened in its history, and he did that by telling a better story about ourselves. I find it fascinating that (UK Prime Minister) Keir Starmer used a lot of Gareth Southgate's language when he tried to come into power. I think he sees in Gareth Southgate's language this idea that we need to write a new story. I think Keir will be the first person to say that even though he recognizes that's the challenge, what that new story is (has) yet to be identified, and I think that's the case across our institutions. I look at every other part of our national life when it comes to government, our news, or our culture and certainly our finances — none of it feels like it's able to reset and regenerate. What role do you think theatre plays in shaping public conversation today, particularly amid so much division? The thing that frightens me the most, which feels so insurmountable, is the fundamental threats to reality itself. Every other challenge, whether it's foreign policy or domestic policy — I think, well, we can probably tackle all that. But the thing I don't know how anyone even begins to fix is the shift in a commonly accepted reality amongst all of us. The real superpower of theatre, of course, is (that) it demands physical proximity in a space and you just have to be one community and you have to turn your phone off for two-and-a-half hours and share a reality. Theatre demands we see the same thing together and I think that's so socially important, probably more important than it's almost ever been. 'Make It Happen' is billed as a fictionalized satire. What does humor allow you to do that drama doesn't? It's historically a very effective weapon in liberating the tension from something and giving you permission to breathe as an audience. All these moments, especially this one, have a real human cost to it — whether it's your pension that you lost or your job or your small business or your reputation. But there are always natural absurdities in these stories as well, especially when they're of that scale. The hubris of it, the size in which that bank grew itself seems so obviously reckless now. There is a natural absurdity to the human foibles and the human condition that I think it's almost kinder to laugh at and roll your eyes at ... We do need to be able to laugh at ourselves, even if it's through grimaces and winces.
Bloomberg
17-07-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
Russian Banks Have Discussed Seeking Bailouts Within Next Year
Top executives at some of Russia's biggest banks have privately discussed seeking a state-funded bailout if the level of bad loans on their books continues to worsen over the next year. At least three lenders identified as systemically important by the Bank of Russia have considered the possibility that they may need to be recapitalized in the next 12 months, according to current and former officials and documents reviewed by Bloomberg News.
Reuters
08-07-2025
- Business
- Reuters
IMF approves $367 million disbursement to Ghana after fourth review
July 7 (Reuters) - The International Monetary Fund's Executive Board has completed the fourth review under its Extended Credit Facility arrangement with Ghana, unlocking an immediate disbursement of about $367 million, the IMF said on Monday. Ghana's finance ministry said earlier in a post on X that the country will receive a $370 million disbursement from the IMF. The new funding brings the West African nation's total disbursements under the arrangement to around $2.3 billion, the fund said. The IMF approved a $3 billion, three-year bailout for Ghana in May 2023 that helped stabilise Ghana's economy and led to a Fitch rating revision.
BBC News
04-07-2025
- Business
- BBC News
Rotherham markets project saved by £6.5m SYMCA bailout
A £6.5m bailout has been approved for the redevelopment of a South Yorkshire town centre after costs of the project Council's plan for the markets complex off Drummond Street will go ahead as hoped after the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority approved the funding, which brought its total investment to £ in March 2023 with a budget of £31.7m, the total cost of the project now sits at £40.9m after surveyors found issues like asbestos and the use of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC).Andrew Bramidge, council regeneration director, said it would be "not just a market" but a "place to learn, connect and take part in community life". "Without this scheme, the existing building would inevitably reach the end of its life, leaving the town without an indoor market," he said."This isn't an option we are prepared to accept."The project includes a new purpose-built library, cafe, gallery and upgraded market areas, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Council said it would secure the future of the market and deliver a "safe, modern and attractive" destination that brought people back into the town centre. Listen to highlights from South Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North
Telegraph
01-07-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
Southern Water bailed out by owner to stave off debt crunch
The owner of Southern Water has been forced to pump hundreds of millions of pounds into the struggling utility as part of a bailout to stave off a costly debt crunch. Owner Macquarie has agreed to a £655m cash injection as part of a deal that will see Southern Water's senior creditors write off a large chunk of its debt pile. Existing shareholders and unnamed new investors have also promised to provide a further £245m by the end of the year, which could rise to £545m depending on the outcome of a legal appeal to increase customer bills further. The maturities on its remaining loans will be pushed out to 2030, giving the company much-needed breathing space on a slew of debt repayments. The move came after a series of potentially damaging credit rating downgrades raised fresh questions about Southern's precarious financial position and put it at risk of a breach of its licence. Moody's demoted the company to junk status in November after it was forced to turn to a pack of vulture funds for hundreds of millions of pounds in costly financing. The new debt came with punishing interest rates approaching 10pc – nearly three times higher than the cost of borrowing assumed for the water industry by regulator Ofwat – and pushed Southern's total borrowings past the £6bn mark. Southern, which provides water to nearly 5m people in the South East of England, had to seek more expensive, alternative sources of funding after being shunned by mainstream capital markets. With S&P threatening to also cut Southern's rating to junk status if it failed to raise further funds, the company was at risk of breaching its regulatory licence. Ofwat requires water suppliers to have investment-grade ratings from at least two of the three global ratings agencies that closely monitor the finances of the world's biggest companies on behalf of investors. Five-year rescue plan Macquarie said the new equity and debt package would 'further improve the company's financial resilience in response to the credit rating downgrades of the UK water framework in recent months'. 'This new equity investment will enable Southern Water to fund its investment plan for the next five years, the 2025 to 2030 regulatory period,' it added. Southern has a convoluted capital structure with its debts stretched across multiple layers. As part of the financing package, bondholders Ares Management and Westbourne Capital have agreed to reduce the amount of debt at the holding company level from £865mn to £415mn.
