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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If the Financial Services Authority is to disappear after the general election, then chairman Lord Turner seems determined to destroy the financial services industry first. Not only does he propose taxing it into oblivion, he thinks Britain would benefit from being less dependent on the sector.
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Stephen Hester is set to become Britain’s first £10m nationalised industry boss and all he has to do is double the share price of Royal Bank of Scotland. In a bear market and from a bombed out value, that surely can’t be that hard?
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Nevermind whether the government wanted Sir Victor Blank to chair Lloyds Banking Group; why would he want to head a nationalised industry?
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ABNAmro and HBoS have both brought down the banks that bought them but they are completely different. Royal Bank of Scotland’s mistake was to overpay for a good bank; Lloyds’ error was to buy a lousy bank.
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Critics of Lloyds’s takeover of HBoS seem to think that without the merger HBoS would have no problems. Wrong. It would have all the problems and be either bust or nationalised.
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The Treasury has got confused between saving banks and saving the banking system. It should seize outright control of the worst banks simply to ensure it reaps the reward of saving them.
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The latest recapitalisation of Britain’s banks offers the chance to right one of the wrongs of the past rescues. There is the opportunity to offer beleaguered savers a decent return on their cash.
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There were eight retail banks in the FTSE 100 in 2007; now five of them are controlled by one group.
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The Scottish Nationalists trying to stop HBoS being bought by the English seem to have missed one important point. Lloyds TSB is Scottish.
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