Could Britain go the way of Cyprus?

To secure a bail-out, Cyprus proposed raiding savers' bank accounts. Could it happen here? And how can you protect your money? John Stepek reports.

Cyprus broke all the rules this week. First, it stunned savers across the eurozone when it proposed that bank deposits and those of small savers in particular were fair game in order to secure a bail-out deal from the eurozone.

In Europe, savings of up to €100,000 in any bank are meant to be protected from loss. This deposit insurance exists for a very good reason: to prevent bank runs. The idea that savings over and above that level could be confiscated was controversial enough. Taking it from those with less than €100,000 in the bank broke a real taboo even if you argue that it's a tax, and therefore not within the remit of the deposit insurance scheme.

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John Stepek

John Stepek is a senior reporter at Bloomberg News and a former editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He graduated from Strathclyde University with a degree in psychology in 1996 and has always been fascinated by the gap between the way the market works in theory and the way it works in practice, and by how our deep-rooted instincts work against our best interests as investors.

He started out in journalism by writing articles about the specific business challenges facing family firms. In 2003, he took a job on the finance desk of Teletext, where he spent two years covering the markets and breaking financial news.

His work has been published in Families in Business, Shares magazine, Spear's Magazine, The Sunday Times, and The Spectator among others. He has also appeared as an expert commentator on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, BBC Radio Scotland, Newsnight, Daily Politics and Bloomberg. His first book, on contrarian investing, The Sceptical Investor, was released in March 2019. You can follow John on Twitter at @john_stepek.