Germany's Siemens Pulled 500 Million Euro from a French Bank

One day after the announcement that the company will pull out of nuclear power business, it has been revealed today that Siemens, headquartered in Munich, Germany, had pulled 500 million euros (US$684 million, 52 billion Japanese yen) 2 weeks ago from an unnamed French bank which is not BNP. (So it's either Societe Generale or Credit Agricole...)

And what did the company do with the money? It deposited the money to the European Central Bank for safety and higher interest. How could an engineering company make a diposit at a central bank? Because Siemens does have a bank, for about a year.

From Financial Times (9/19/2011):

Siemens withdrew more than half-a-billion euros in cash deposits from a large French bank two weeks ago and transferred it to the European Central Bank, in a sign of how companies are seeking havens amid Europe’s sovereign debt crisis.

The German industrial group withdrew the money partly because of concerns about the future financial health of the bank and partly to benefit from higher interest rates paid by the ECB, a person with direct knowledge of the matter told the Financial Times.

In total, Siemens has parked between €4bn ($5.4bn) and €6bn at the ECB’s facilities, mostly through one-week deposits, this person said. Only a handful of large companies have the banking licences that allow them to deposit cash directly with the ECB.

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The company’s move came almost a year after Europe’s largest engineering conglomerate prepared itself for a future financial crisis by launching its own bank, an unusual move for an industrial group outside the car sector, where companies run big car financing and leasing businesses.

In an interview last December, Roland Châlons-Browne, chief executive of Siemens’ financial services unit, said its banking business would enable the group to tap the central bank for liquidity and deposit cash at the ECB.

“In the case of another financial crisis, we will be able to broaden our flexibility and take out risk with our own bank,” Mr Châlons-Browne said at the time.

Siemens does not only use the ECB as a haven; it also gets paid a slightly higher interest rate than it would get from a commercial bank.

The ECB paid an average interest rate last week of 1.01 per cent for its regular offers of one-week deposits, under which it withdraws from the financial system an amount of liquidity equivalent to the amount it has spent on eurozone government bonds.

That compares with an average overnight interest rate paid by eurozone banks of 0.95 per cent.

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Stuxnet Has Moved On to China

After having wrecked havoc in Iran, Stuxnet the 'cyber weapon of mass destruction' apparently has moved on to China and is busy destroying computers there.

I'm very curious to know how it traveled from Iran to China... Hmmm. Maybe Chinese should have used legit copies of Windows from Microsoft...

So, who was it who created this malware? Maybe this one and this one?

Stuxnet 'cyber superweapon' moves to China (9/30/2010 AFP via Breitbart)

"A computer virus dubbed the world's "first cyber superweapon" by experts and which may have been designed to attack Iran's nuclear facilities has found a new target -- China.

"The Stuxnet computer worm has wreaked havoc in China, infecting millions of computers around the country, state media reported this week.

"Stuxnet is feared by experts around the globe as it can break into computers that control machinery at the heart of industry, allowing an attacker to assume control of critical systems like pumps, motors, alarms and valves.

"It could, technically, make factory boilers explode, destroy gas pipelines or even cause a nuclear plant to malfunction.

"The virus targets control systems made by German industrial giant Siemens commonly used to manage water supplies, oil rigs, power plants and other industrial facilities." [The article continues.]

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