Britannia Radio

This throws a 'googly' into the works.  I have no idea if it is valid 
or not .   The FT also has a one-sentence reference to the report.  
Agence France Presse  carries more details under the headline "ECB 
rejects report of huge loss"

If it's false,  it still is worrying that such rumours should fly 
around!

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GUARDIAN  Blogs   27.2.09

PARIS, Feb 26 (Reuters) - Bankrupt banks have left the European 
Central Bank facing a bill of over 1 billion euros which must be 
shared between national central banks, a French newspaper reported on 
Thursday without citing its sources.

But an ECB spokeswoman denied there were any losses as a result of 
operations by the ECB and national central banks in 2008.

The report in Le Monde said that several national central banks had 
run up losses on operations with Lehman Brothers and several 
Icelandic banks, and that these must be paid for by all 16 members of 
the ECB.

Germany's Bundesbank was one of the worst affected by its dealing 
with Lehman Brothers, and the Luxembourg and Dutch central banks had 
suffered from the collapse of Icelandic banks, it said. "Bankrupt 
banks leave bill of more than 1 billion euros to the ECB," the 
headline of the report said.
"The central banks of the euro zone will have to soak up the bill 
that the bankrupt commercial banks have left to the European Central 
Bank. And the losses for the ECB will be counted in billions of euros 
for 2008," the story said.

The ECB spokeswoman said ECB accounts would be released on March 5 
but denied there were any losses as a result of central bank operations.
"According to available information, the Eurosystem as a whole 
reached a significant positive financial result in 2008 after 
conservative and prudent provisioning," she said.
"No losses were recorded as a result of Eurosystem operations in 2008."

The newspaper said the Bank of France had not faced any losses on 
credit lines it extended to Lehman Brothers.

A spokeswoman for the Bank of France declined to comment on the report.
Le Monde said a working group had been set up within the ECB to 
decide what to do with the assets.
"It's a collective decision, where each central bank puts its 
commitments on the table," the newspaper quoted an ECB source as saying.
"We have the same problem as everyone else in estimating the value of 
certain securities when there is no market," Le Monde quoted a source 
close to the matter as saying.

The newspaper also said the ECB was annoyed with Slovenian central 
banker Marko Kranjec for failing to stick to the communication plan 
that was agreed on the subject.

On Feb. 12, he said on Slovenian television that many central banks 
were contaminated by bad paper. He said the Bank of Slovenia was 
among them, but added that the loss was not expected to amount to 
more than a few million euros.
(Writing by Anna Willard; additional reporting by Krista Hughes in 
Frankfurt; editing by Stephen Nisbet)