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Business Daily: The Pig and the Python

22/12/2009

The Pig and the Python

BBC World Service - Business Daily, The Pig and the Python

How the banks will cope with commercial property loans that have gone sour.

Property investor Patrick Vaughan talks about banks which took on commercial property loans. He likens the banks to a python which swallowed a large pig.

Banks have to face up to the ugly truth that loans they made on commercial property in the boom times, may be about to go sour. It's not only been in Dubai where massive falls in property values led to the fear of default. 

After the credit crisis struck, the value of commercial property fell by forty per cent or more in places such as the UK, the US, Spain and Ireland. It is feared that some companies will be unable to make their loan payments to the banks.  

Veteran British property investor Patrick Vaughan is a partner in the London Stamford investment fund, launched in 2007. He likens the banks to a python which swallowed a large pig which represents the property debts which went sour. Will the pig be digested slowly, or will it kill the python?

And he warns there may be another correction in the property market.  

Plus the BBC's Laura Sheeter reports from New York on an organisation which teaches entrepreneurship to young people living in poverty.

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