The stock market’s reaction to Prudential’s (LON:PRU) planned record rights issue is ungrateful. After all the mega-refinancings to fill black holes in balance sheets, this is a share issue based on expansion rather than rescue.
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Why bother being boss of a big bank if you are not allowed to take the rewards? Lloyds Banking Group’s chief executive has followed Barclays’ and RBSs in bowing to public pressure in rejecting bonuses. Yet while they make the sacrifice, bankers at lower levels keep their windfalls.
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If we don’t want banks running private-equity operations, why do we want private equity operations running banks? In the eagerness to come up with a new banking model for the post-crash era, we mustn’t simply welcome any alternative.
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Commercial property values are rising again and no-one should be more pleased than the owners of Britain’s banks – ie, us. Balance sheet write-offs could soon be replaced by write-backs.
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The supreme court’s ruling on bank charges is a rare piece of good news for the banking sector and a rare piece of common sense imposed on regulators. It is not the Office of Fair Trading’s role to set prices.
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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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How do you force banks to lend when their best customers don’t want to borrow? Make them lend to their worst customers?
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It’s a funny old world where Tesco (LON:TSCO) is the answer to a monopolies problem.
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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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It’s taken a long time to get a policy statement from shadow chancellor George Osborne, but now it has come, his call for curbs on bankers’ bonuses risks generating sympathy for the villains.
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