Top banks in Europe and Asia revealed on Monday they could lose billions of dollars in a massive alleged pyramid investment fraud scam run by Wall Street figurehead Bernard Madoff.
British, Japanese, South Korean, French and Spanish banks were among the worst affected, with Royal Bank of Scotland saying it could lose about 400 million pounds (450 million euros, $600 million) as a result of the scam.
Shares in Spain's Santander bank plunged some five per cent in early trading on Monday after the lender said that one of its funds had exposure of more than three billion dollars to the scandal-hit firm Madoff Investment Securities.
French Natixis bank, already brought low by subprime losses, put its maxiumum potential exposure at 450 million euros.
Japanese financial giant Nomura said it could lose up to $303 million and officials said South Korean financial institutions, including an insurer and six asset management firms had a total exposure of $95.1 million.
Madoff, a 70-year-old Wall Street veteran who was arrested on Thursday, is alleged by the US prosecutors to have confessed to defrauding investors of $50 billion in a long-running scam that collapsed as a result of the financial crisis.
The Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington alleges that Madoff delivered consistently strong returns by secretly using the principal from new investors to pay out to other investors in the scheme, a version of what is known as "pyramid fraud".