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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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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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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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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“Is it time for a new windfall tax on banks?” asked this blog back in the summer. It seems so. The Westminster press briefing is that the chancellor is considering a banks tax in his pre-budget statement.
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If land is valuable because they aren’t making it any more, the value of equities ought to be about to plunge. The markets are set to be flooded with shares in coming years.
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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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