E poi si parla di parità di condizioni..

[ramirez]

Forse sono ingenuo, forse non capisco molto.
So che a Bruxelles c'è gente il cui unico lavoro è
verificare che la concorrenza in ambito europeo sia 'fair'
E inviano richiami di qua e richiami di là..
Letto l'articolo sinceramente qualche dubbio mi viene.
Una banca posseduta da chi fabbrica automobili
e i cui depositi sono garantiti (come ogni banca) dal Governo.
Pertanto Bmw, Mercedes ecc possono garantire tassi
migliori delle altre banche (in fin dei conti pagherebbero di più
se cercassero fondi alle banche o tramite obbligazioni)
usufruirne per finanziare gli acquirenti delle loro auto o
per investimenti...e i clienti sono (presumo) ben felici:
beccano un bell'interesse, sono garantiti dallo Stato
e aiutano un'azienda nazionale. BINGOOOOOO !!!!
.
German banking

Finance on four wheels
Mar 19th 2009 | BERLIN
From The Economist print edition

Germany’s savers have found a racy place to stash their cash


IN THE land of the autobahn, love for cars and the firms that build them knows no bounds. What’s more, the relationship appears to be for worse as well as for better. For even as car sales slump, German savers are pulling money from their safe, but staid, savings banks and entrusting it to their racy—if ropy—carmakers.
BMW Bank’s deposits have jumped by almost 70% over the past five months. Those at Mercedes-Benz Bank have doubled over the same period and Volkswagen’s financial-services arm ended the year with deposits up by about a third. Banking with car companies is nothing new in Germany. Some big carmakers have been holding money for their customers for over a decade, using the cash to finance car loans and leases. But the recent surge in deposits is a peculiar consequence of the credit crunch in Germany.

Since credit markets froze last autumn, carmakers raising money have had to turn to depositors, rather than banks and wholesale financial markets. “Having an independent bank is a useful source of liquidity when liquidity is scarce,” admits Holger Bachmann, the head of deposits at BMW Bank.
To attract savers, the car companies are having to offer attractively upholstered interest rates. Niels Nauhauser of the consumer-protection agency in Baden-Württemberg reckons that car companies were paying depositors up to 5% in December, more than double the average of 2.2% on cash deposits at savings banks.
But even those prices work out cheaper than raising money from banks or the capital markets. For that, the automakers have regulators to thank. When the German government offered retail-bank customers a guarantee on deposits last October to stabilise the banking sector, it included deposits held with car-company banks, making them no more risky than even the most pedestrian savings bank. Lenders in the capital markets, however, have no such guarantee. They are more influenced by the credit ratings of car-company banks, and many of those face potential downgrades on concerns that a slowing economy will lead to increased bad debts on car loans and a fall in the value of second-hand cars sold at the end of their leases.

There is another more subtle reason why the carmakers may be souping up their financial-service businesses. Potentially, it puts them higher up the government-subsidy queue (a place they are always happy to be). Volkswagen’s banking arm has already been granted €2 billion ($2.6 billion) in loan guarantees by Germany’s bank bail-out fund, though it has not yet drawn them down. Other car companies are understood to be considering applying for similar support for their banking arms. One lesson from the crisis is that the closer firms are to the financial system, the better the chance of receiving a handout. Hence, perhaps, the sort of manoeuvring from the car industry that any German driver would be proud of.