People are utterly failing to grasp the global nature of this problem. Every single bank around the world is leveraged up to its eyeballs and the elephant in the room is that banks have basically nothing on their balance sheets. They've done an Enron and valued worthless assets at so many billions, put them on their balance sheets and then rehypothecated them several times. Talking about tangible equity versus total assets is a waste of time because they've been show to be a bit of a big fat lie. Santander's rise has been inextricably linked to the over expansion of the Spanish economy and like banks like RBS they've thrown money they don't really have around in takeovers such as that of Abbey. The thorny issue of credit default swaps and what has actually funded building in Spain rears its head because it is impossible to know who has been exposed to what until it all kicks off. 2008 taught us that, if nothing else, and what has improved since 2008? Absolutely nothing.
It's also quite clear that they're offering somewhat more attractive rates to British savers so they can use it to bolster the balance sheets of Santander as a whole. The Icelandic banks did exactly the same thing and it was a big fat warning as to what was to come because they were doing it to desperately bolster their balance sheets. That is not a 'well capitalised' bank, which frankly is a silly thing to say in the current climate. The notion they are 'firewalling' anything is utterly laughable. Like I said, this is a cancer that will just spread.
As for what effect it will have on Ferrari, well, they are effectively their title sponsor and there really is no one else on the horizon. That's not the case for McLaren.
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