The Edge

Richard Northedge takes on corporate finance

Archive for the ‘Bank Merger’ category

RBS sets example for public-sector cuts

The public-sector job cuts have started.
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If Prudential shuns the UK it can shun its regulator too

For a UK company to launch a record £13bn rights issue on the eve of a finely-balanced general election in its home country and a Greek debt crisis that is circling the globe looked a risky strategy.
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Private equity buy-outs and banking do not mix

Are these overgeared pyramids really the people to be buying Britain’s banks?
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Now chase the real Northern Rock villains

In the United States the miscreant Northern Rock executives would gave received jail sentences longer than their life expectancy. In China they might have been executed. But even a £500,000 fine is exceptional in Britain, which is only just taking financial collapse seriously.
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Volcker to tell UK MPs to split the banks

President Obama’s call to make banks shed risky trading – effectively a new Glass-Steagall Act – is not off the UK agenda, despite being dismissed by government ministers. The architect of the plan, former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, is coming to the House of Commons to outline his plan.
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Why reveal RBS, HBOS secret at all?

Nevermind that the Bank of England kept secret for a year its massive loan to HBoS and RBS (LON:RBS), why on earth did it choose to break its silence on the day Lloyds Banking Group (LON:LLOY) announces its record rights issue?
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Who will back the new banks?

The government’s promise of three new banks looks attractive for an industry that has retreated to a Big Four offering little competition. But one of the three newcomers isn’t new and the other two are tiddlers.
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When is a bank small enough to fail?

If banks shouldn’t be “too big to fail” how small must they be before we allow them to collapse? It’s the question the Bank of England’s governor must answer.
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Letting Lehman fail was shortsighted

Dare one ask, amid all the comment to mark the year since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, were the financial regulators wrong in refusing to rescue the bank?
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If only Lloyds Banking had bought Northern Rock

Two years on from the run on Northern Rock in September 2007 and Lloyds Banking Group (LON:LLOY) should be cursing the regulators for blocking its bid to rescue the mortgage bank. Lloyds Banking Group would have lost the whole of the £1.7bn bid price and more – but still saved that sum many times over.
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