The times are so alarming that sometimes all you can do is laugh. Consider Fortis, the large Belgian-Dutch bank and insurance company, which this week became Europe’s biggest casualty so far of the world financial turmoil.
Only a few months ago it launched a new advertising campaign. It was a nice catchy slogan, too. ”Here today. Where tomorrow?”
Where indeed? As self-fulfilling prophecies go, this was right up there with the Oedipus legend.
Yet the slogan also brings to mind what many Belgians and other people see as the grievous condition of Belgium itself. The Belgian state is here today, as it has been for the past 177 years, but where will it be tomorrow?
The gulf between the prosperous, Dutch-speaking northern region of Flanders and the less prosperous, French-speaking southern region of Wallonia is so wide that, apart from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Belgium must be classified these days as Europe’s most internally divided country.
Belgium has been in almost total political paralysis since a general election in June 2007, with Flemish and Walloon parties unable to agree a deal on more autonomy for the regions. Only a week before Fortis was bailed out, Prime Minister Yves Leterme’s government was brought to its knees when a Flemish nationalist party withdrew its support.
Yet this is by no means the whole story. Perhaps the most important lesson from the Fortis drama is that, when the chips were down, the Belgian government and Belgian regulators were able to co-ordinate a rapid emergency intervention to save the company.
It wasn’t other banks or the private sector that rescued Fortis. It wasn’t Flanders and it wasn’t Wallonia. It was, together with the Netherlands and Luxembourg, the much-maligned Belgian state. Two days later, the Belgian state helped shore up the finances of Dexia, the Franco-Belgian financial services group.
No wonder Leterme was confident enough to appear on Belgian TV on Tuesday evening and say pointedly that, “as a new shareholder” in Fortis, the Belgian government would not be happy if the bank awarded a €4m-5m payoff to Herman Verwilst, the former chief executive.
So, three cheers for Belgium – and a loud raspberry for the people who dreamed up Fortis’s advertising campaign!
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