UBS, RBS, Lloyd hit the wall of reality

Nothing much to say except that European banks — not sure they are allowed to mark to fantasy or whether they are compelled to mark to market — remind us that the recession is not over, but rather that the Greater Depression is taking hold:

Nov. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and Lloyds Banking Group Plc will receive 31.3 billion pounds ($51 billion) in a second bailout from the U.K. taxpayer as the two banks agreed to cap bonuses.

The Treasury will inject 25.5 billion pounds of capital into RBS, for a total of 45.5 billion pounds, making it the costliest bailout of any bank worldwide. The government will fund about a quarter of Lloyds’s 21 billion-pound fundraising. Both banks said they won’t pay cash bonuses to workers earning more than 39,000 pounds this year.

Nov. 3 (Bloomberg) -- [...] UBS declined 1 franc, or 5.8 percent, to 16.35 francs. The Zurich-based bank said today that outflows at its wealth management units totaled a net 26.6 billion francs ($25.8 billion), up from 22.3 billion francs in the second quarter.

Chief Executive Officer Oswald Gruebel, who joined in February, is trying to halt redemptions by rich clients and rebuild the investment bank after more than $50 billion of losses and writedowns tied to the financial crisis. Earnings at the wealth management and Swiss bank unit, the biggest profit contributor, slumped 52 percent to 792 million francs in the third quarter from a year earlier, the bank reported.

Nov. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Stocks in Europe declined to a one- month low after UBS AG reported a wider-than-estimated loss [...]
UBS sank the most in two months as Switzerland’s largest bank posted its fourth consecutive quarterly loss.