Hypo Group Alpe Adria nationalized by Austrian government...

Hope the Austrian government knows what it is getting itself into... Hypo was basically treated as a cash machine by the late lamented Joerg Haider, premier of the southern Austrian state of Carinthia, to finance his populist policies. A buddy of his was a previous CEO and got involved in some dodgy lending to Balkan countries, in particular Croatia (e.g. lease deals on yachts that subsequently 'disappeared'). So it looks like fairly large-scale fraud. Austrian government nationalized Hypo without due diligence to avoid systemic risks, and when they look at the books going into 2010 some quite nasty stuff is likely to come to light...