Fortis: once upon a time

The near-collapse of Fortis followed the standard modern-day bank-in-distress storyline. There was an expensive top-of-the-cycle acquisition, a subsequent shortage of capital, the insistence of no liquidity problems, the blaming of rumour-mongers and the inevitable denouement of government intervention. Fortis was rescued over the weekend but it isn’t out of the woods just yet. The governments of Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg injected E11.2bn of equity into the capital-starved banking...