In most cases the losses are not much more than initial capital, but one bank – the specialist property financier Anglo Irish, which had grown very aggressively over the past decade to become the third largest bank in Ireland – seems set to experience loan-losses in excess of an astonishing 40 per cent of its portfolio.
This hole is in the process of being filled by the Irish Government, which seized control of the bank in early 2009, and which has already injected sums equivalent to about 10 per cent of GDP, and will inject more in the coming months – most of which it does not expect to recover.