PRESS RELEASE

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Bank Fund Collapses
Spread from Germany to France;
Bank Paribas Shuts Down Three Funds

Aug. 8, 2007 (EIRNS)—The Lyndon LaRouche Political Action Committee (LPAC) issued the following release today.

More bad news of the international banking sector came today from France, from BNP Paribas, one of the five largest banks in the world, which announced that it was suspending all transactions of three of its "dynamic investment funds." All are Asset-Backed Securities (ABS) investment funds, like the five bank funds whose shutdowns have been announced by German banks in recent days, and all are connected to the subprime and CDO connected stock markets. The three closed Paribas funds are: Parvest Dynamic ABS; BNP Paribas ABS Euribor (Euro interbank rates from a week to a year); and BNP Paribas ABS EONIA (euro overnight index average).

Le Monde reported that the bank declared that the vanishing of all transactions in certain segments of the CDO markets in the United States has lead to a total absence of prices of reference, and to the near-total illiquidity of assets appearing in the portfolios of funds, whatever their quality or their rating might once have been.