Friday, April 1, 2011

Fed bailed out Libya-owned bank

Arab Banking Corp., a lender part- owned by the Central Bank of Libya,a bank majority owned by the Libya Central Bank, was the direct recipient of US taxpayer largesse in the form of discount window borrowing.

Arab Banking Corp., the lender part- owned by the Central Bank of Libya, used a New York branch to get 73 loans from the U.S. Federal Reserve in the 18 months after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. collapsed.

The bank, then 29 percent-owned by the Libyan state, had aggregate borrowings in that period of $35 billion -- while the largest single loan amount outstanding was $1.2 billion in July 2009, according to Fed data released yesterday. In October 2008, when lending to financial institutions by the central bank’s so- called discount window peaked at $111 billion, Arab Banking took repeated loans totaling more than $2 billion.

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