The Belgian government
is to acquire the domestic retail banking division of Dexia in a
€4bn ($5.43bn) nationalisation.

The forced break-up of
Dexia includes up to €90bn of state funding over the next 10 years
from the governments of Belgium, France and Luxembourg, the
guarantees split: 60.5% Belgium, 36.5% France and 3%
Luxembourg.

Dexia’s France-based
local government financing unit will be merged with the French
public sector lender Caisse des Depots and the post office banking
unit, Banque Postale.

Interest in Dexia’s
healthy Turkey-based retail banking unit, Denizbank, will
intensify.

DenizBank ended the
first half with a branch network of 540 outlets, up 89
year-on-year, serving 4.6m customers.

At the end of June,
DenizBank had market shares in Turkey of 2.8% for deposits and 4.3%
for loans with a loan-to-deposit ratio of 121%, deposits of
TRY23.4bn ($12.7bn) and loans of TRY28.3bn).