In a year when his company lost two thirds of its market value and the financial crisis engulfed the global banking sector, Erste Group Bank Chief Executive Andreas Treichl started to enjoy himself.

“I enjoy my job more today more than I enjoyed my job in 2007,” he told investors at the Austrian bank’s Capital Markets Day. “I found out that at some point in time, when the stock price was only going up, I took no pleasure in it any more. It actually bored me.”

Analysts have slashed their estimates for Erste’s 2009 results since a profit warning earlier this year and the bank has asked the Austrian government for a 2.7 billion euro injection to prop up its capital ratio.

But it is right for everyone to lower their expectations, Treichl said, because the crisis means the banking sector is going to have to get a lot more modest about returns and that’s a good thing.

“I actually got upset at you,” he told the investors.

“The market asks me for more and more and more, and all I’m
doing is making more money, trying to get the stock price up and
where is this going to end up?”

One good thing about the crisis, to which no end is in
sight, is that it has taught everyone a lesson or two –
including himself, Treichl said.

“I’d rather, in 2009, spend my time on regaining the
confidence of my clients than to have a share price that’s 2
percent higher,” he said, before taking at swipe at financial
institutions as a whole.

“We bought some stupid stuff. To believe that Iceland is
triple-A is probably stupid, because it’s stupid to believe a
rating by Standard & Poor’s.”

Treichl, known for his straight-talking and colourful
rhetorical style, later asked his admonished audience if they
had any questions for him. No one dared.

 By Sylvia Westall and Boris Groendahl

Senate Republicans who killed an auto industry bailout must have had a particularly nasty sense of deja vu. If they didn’t get on board, the economy would collapse. “For the hundreds of thousands of people whose jobs depend on this industry, this will not be joyous season,” bellowed Sen. Chris Dodd. It was up to the Republicans. To save Detroit, all they had to do was sign over a fraction of what they’d agreed to for Wall Street.

It wasn’t as if there was another industry waiting in the wings, ready to head to Washington demanding a bailout as soon as the automakers got theirs. So the Republicans couldn’t have feared yet another dollop of largess around the corner. Ultimately, it came down to good old lefty Union vs. rightly Republicans arguing over when workers would agree to take pay cuts.

Has the countdown begun to industrywide bankruptcy? That’s what the automakers say — because of their shared suppliers and vendors, the failure of one Detroit automaker could drag down the other two, as well as other businesses. GM, Ford and Chrysler employ nearly 250,000 people directly, and 100,000 more jobs at parts suppliers could hang on their survival. The companies say one in 10 U.S. jobs is related to the auto sector.

Rebellious Republicans argued that the White House, which favored the bailout, had become irrelevant. After all, the new president takes office in just over a month, making George W. Bush about as lame as a duck sunning on a Fort Lauderdale beach.

Attention is now turning to the Treasury Department’s tattered TARP program, and whether Hank Paulson will do an about-face and throw Detroit a lifeline from what’s left of the $700 billion rescue program for the financial industry. Could Bush’s grand finale be to thumb his nose at his own party and keep hundreds of thousands of people working through Christmas?

Which stock will rise the most in the month of December, AIG or GM?

Deals of the Day:

* Germany’s Daimler signed a $250 million deal to acquire a 10 percent stake in Kamaz, Russia’s largest truck maker, executives from Daimler and Kamaz told a joint news conference.

* Britain’s Brulines Group said it had completed the acquisition of Vianet from the administrators of Vianet Group for an undisclosed sum.

* South Korea’s retail giant Lotte Group said it was in the bidding for Doosan Corp’s spirits-making division, in a deal reportedly worth up to $500 million, as it looks to beef up its liquor business.

* KB Financial, which runs South Korea’s top retail bank Kookmin, has sold a 3.2 percent stake in itself near the bottom of an offer range for $300 million, three sources with knowledge of the sale said.

(Photo: Reuters/Carlos Barria)