Bank savers facing anxious wait

The troubled Icelandic parent bank has been naitonalised

People with savings in the collapsed Isle of Man bank Kaupthing Singer and Friedlander are still unsure how much of their money they will get back.

Hundreds of customers packed a public meeting in Douglas on Thursday to hear what led to the bank's liquidation.

Problems stemmed from the inability of its Icelandic parent bank, Kaupthing, to provide support, the Financial Supervision Commission (FSC) said.

Three institutions have expressed an interest in taking over the Manx bank.

Savers to claim

Liquidator Mike Simpson, of PriceWaterhouseCoopers, said of the three parties: "They have expressed an interest initially to the FSC and also I have had discussions with them.

"They were very brief discussions because I have not been able to give them very much information.

"But I will be pursuing that and then, I expect, over the course of the next couple of days it will become clear just how serious that interest is."

Tynwald met on Thursday to approve new legislation to boost the level of guaranteed protection for bank customers from �15,000 to �50,000.

The FSC said Kaupthing Singer and Friedlander's customers would be contacted and invited to make a claim once the depositors' protection scheme (DPS) was activated.

However it has not yet been made clear which amount they will be able to claim.

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