BP’s $17bn loss, amid the Gulf of Mexico clean-up, was trumpeted as “the biggest quarterly loss ever announced by a British company.” That’s not a hard record to dispute: few companies could lose so much and remain solvent, but even fewer report their results four times a year. BP had the field to itself.

(more…)

Instead of criticising the banks for not lending to business, the government should look at its own Enterprise Finance Guarantee. Lending under the scheme has fallen by 60 per cent since last year. Maybe suitable firms just aren’t that keen to borrow?
(more…)

Vince Cable certainly thinks outside the box. After the mansion tax and graduate tax, the business secretary is now mooting allowing banks to pay bonuses only if they lend. But what can look like creative thinking from an Opposition politician can be plain daft from a government minister.
(more…)

Surely the lesson we should have learned in the three years since the banking crisis is to be wary of banks we don’t know, whether newcomers or rapidly-growing former building societies. Yet a phalanx of new banks with no history is presenting itself as the solution to the crisis. Surely we will be too sceptical to use them?
(more…)

Why are we picking on bankers? The European Union has tough new rules on bonuses paid by banks, but if the curbs are sensible, shouldn’t they apply to all businesses?
(more…)

Taxing the banks is popular but every pound removed from their balance sheets weakens their capital ratios. That either means weaker banks – and surely we don’t want to go there again – or lower lending.
(more…)

Faced with worries and complaints about big banks, the government has ended up bringing another, even bigger, bank onto the British high street. If customers do not like the Big Four, why does allowing Banco Santander (NYSE:STD) to become Britain’s Big Fifth bank help?
(more…)

The public-sector job cuts have started.
(more…)

Gordon Brown’s days as UK prime minister may be numbered but he will leave a legacy for the inheritor of 10 Downing Street. The bank shares he bought amid against much opposition will go some way to squaring the country’s finances in future years.
(more…)

Are these overgeared pyramids really the people to be buying Britain’s banks?
(more…)