THE EVENT: Governments and investors moved to shore up four teetering European banks over the weekend and Monday, injecting new funds into Belgian-Dutch Fortis, Germany's Hypo Real Estate Holding AG, and Iceland's Glitnir hf, while the U.K.'s Bradford & Bingley joined Northern Rock under government ownership.

*FORTIS: Only a year after it took part in the biggest ever banking merger, troubled financial services company Fortis needed a EUR11.2 billion capital injection from the Belgian, Dutch and Luxembourg governments and will sell most of the stake it bought in ABN Amro, netting way below the EUR24 billion it paid.

Fortis has struggled since it bought ABN Amro assets last year at the height of the market and just ahead of the ensuing credit crisis.

THE BACKGROUND: The Fortis move follows weekend talks between the three governments and supervisory bodies aimed at getting the bank back on its feet and resolving uncertainty about its financial strength.

Emergency weekend talks followed two days of heavy share price losses as investors became increasingly worried about the company's financial health. A hastily arranged media conference and a promise to sell up to EUR10 billion worth of assets failed to halt the decline.

*BRADFORD & BINGLEY: Banco Santander SA (STD) U.K. unit Abbey National said Monday it will take over Bradford & Bingley's retail deposits and branches as the struggling buy-to-let lender was nationalized.

The deal involves the transfer of GBP20 billion in retail deposits with some 2.7 million customers and 197 retail branches and 141 agencies in third party premises. All related employees will also transfer.

THE DETAILS: Santander is paying GBP612 million for the assets, including the transfer of GBP208 million of capital relating to offshore companies.

The deal comes just one week after Santander received shareholder approval for a capital increase to fund the purchase of another U.K. bank, Alliance & Leicester PLC (AL.LN) for GBP1.3 billion.

The combined business of Abbey, Alliance & Leicester and B&B will have 1,286 branches spread across the U.K. The deals are expected to increase Santander's market share of U.K. retail deposits to around 10% and the combined business will also have a customer base of 24 million.

THE BACKGROUND: Bradford & Bingley, like Northern Rock - which was nationalized earlier this year - was heavily depended on wholesale funding, which dried up as the credit crunch took hold.

Since then, B&B has gone from assuring the market about long-term funding facilities and denying it needs capital, to launching a rights issue that was restructured twice: first due to a profit warning and again when U.S. investment firm TPG pulled out of the capital increase in the wake of two ratings downgrades by Moody's Ratings Services.

THE FINAL STRAW: B&B's situation worsened when both Fitch Ratings and Standard & Poor's downgraded it, constraining the bank's already limited room for maneuver on funding. In addition the press has been rife with reports that the U.K. financial services authority had tried but failed to find a buyer for the bank.

*HYPO REAL ESTATE: Hypo Real Estate, one of Europe's largest real-estate, project finance and local government lenders, said Monday that a consortium of German private banks and the government stepped in with EUR35 billion to bail it out.

The group, which has total assets of EUR395 billion and 1,900 employees, said it would have to take a write-down on goodwill of its Depfa Bank PLC unit, without specifying the size, and would scrap its dividend.

Hypo bought Depfa in September 2007 for more than EUR5 billion giving it a central role in European public financing.

*GLITNIR: The government of Iceland on Monday said it had bought a 75% stake in Glitnir, the country's third-largest bank, in a EUR600 million deal after the bank's short-term financing deteriorated rapidly amid tightening interbank funding markets.

"The events unfolding in international financial markets in the past two weeks have had unforeseen consequences drastically changing the conditions of Glitnir's short-term funding," Glitnir said.

*MARKET REACTION: Rabobank said the Fortis bailout was a "wonderful solution," and should help lift its share price as the bank is now one of the most solvent banks around with very low valuations. It rates Fortis at buy.

Landsbanki Kepler analyst Dirk Becker said the Hypo Real Estate bailout signals the financial crisis is widening to completely new asset classes such as public finance and covered bonds, which previously were in high demand and considered safe.

Meanwhile, the nationalization of Glitnir is "something most will see as regretful, as a step back in history about six years," said Landsbanki analyst Benedikt Stefansson. "This type of intervention has not happened here in recent history."

At 1137 GMT, Fortis shares were down 11% at EUR4.59 in Amsterdam, while Hypo Real Estate shares had fallen 70% to EUR4.02. Glitnir shares were suspended ahead of Monday's announcement.

*LOOKING AHEAD: On Monday market attention turned to Belgian-French bank Dexia SA, with its shares plunging more than 24% on reports that it needed new capital.

Dexia insisted it had no liquidity problems but confirmed that its supervisory board met Sunday to consider the impact of the Fortis situation. "Obviously, with these exceptional market conditions, we are monitoring the situation closely," the spokeswoman said.

-By Digby Larner, Dow Jones Newswires; +33 1 4017 1748; digby.larner@ dowjones.com

(Stefan Kloet, Ulrike Dauer and Anna Molin contributed to this item.)