Federal Reserve releases details of financial bailout

Dec 2, 2010, 3:33 GMT

Washington - The Federal Reserve on Wednesday released details of its financial bailout programmes at the height of the financial crisis that show the extent to which international firms benefited from the US assistance.

The beneficiaries were not just suffering US banks, but also large firms such as General Electric and to a 'surprising degree' foreign banks, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The US central bank gave out some 3.3 trillion dollars in 21,000 transactions as part of 10 loan programmes.

Foreign firms received billions of dollars in short-term credit, including one of the biggest loans of 37 billion dollars to Swiss bank UBS.

Other international recipients included Belgium's Dexia AG with 23 billion dollars, Germany's Commerzbank AG with 13 billion dollars from one programme and 25 other separate loans amounting to 7.25 billion dollars, and Britain's Barclays PLC with 10 billion dollars, the newspaper reported.

Additionally, 600 billion dollars in credit went to international central banks, the Journal reported.

The credit programmes were designed to prevent the financial sector from collapsing at the height of the crisis in 2008 and 2009. The programmes have since been ended and most of the funds have been repaid.

The US investment bank Goldman Sachs went to the Fed for support 84 times, taking out 18 billion dollars in credit, after the collapse of Lehman Bros set off the crisis. Competitor Morgan Stanley made 212 credit requests worth 60 billion dollars.

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