Lloyds Banking Share Discussion Threads

[cheshire pete] 15/12/2019 12:44

"He just had the fairest and most sensible plan on the way forward with Brexit".

All about timing Minerve...his plan was 3 years too late and the electorate had run out of patience by then lol.

Yours Little Englander lol.

[skinny] 15/12/2019 12:34

The final paragraph :-

"All lenders are expected to pass, which could mean large returns to shareholders. “Banks with a big surplus in a stressed scenario are simply operating with inefficient capital structures,” said Gary Greenwood at Shore Capital."

[gotnorolex] 15/12/2019 12:32

Confused Gina Miller admits NEW plot to wreck Boris Johnson's Brexit – despite Remainer humiliation!
Gina, nowhere to hide, says......
“I think the Withdrawal Agreement will go through by Christmas. And then it’s law, and it’s ratified in January"!.

[gaffer73] 15/12/2019 12:18

Don't think Lloyds will have any trouble passing.

[cheshire pete] 15/12/2019 12:11

Think he has grahamite2, definitely his to lose. Known unknowns include the time taken to get us out (fully out) of the EU and get the NHS, schools and police upgraded, and how long will it take labour to re-brand and how big a force will they be in 4.5 years. Also whether or not the EU will co-operate with our departure now that Boris has a good majority.
Wonder if Gina Miller is trying to conjure up new legal challenges lol...gone very quiet.
We need Farage still to keep a watchful eye on progress.

[grahamite2] 15/12/2019 12:05

"We are the servants now." What a refreshing change!

I don't know how many people will have got the reference, but it probably doesn't matter.

[gotnorolex] 15/12/2019 11:49

But..but..but Min won every argument and the popular vote!

[grahamite2] 15/12/2019 11:45

The post mortem has been almost as enjoyable as the election itself.

Best is that the interlopers who have Labour in their scaly grip haven't learned a thing. Not a thing. All they have is hatred and bile - Minerve isn't some weird outlier, he's typical Momentum. "Too stupid to vote, the old should hurry up and die" - all par for the course.

At this rate Boris has got the next election sewn up too!

[minerve 2] 15/12/2019 11:05

"You need to follow the regulations of the destination market if you want to export."

Something thicko Brexiters don't realise.

Standards for Tuvalu anyone?

[minerve 2] 15/12/2019 11:03

"Jacko wow you are 8 hours behind everyone at the moment . Just a tad surprised i thought it was more like 50 years :-)"

ROFLMAO!

[alphorn] 15/12/2019 11:03

‘level playing field’ on regulations.

That depends what it is max. I have just paid out £1,500 to have single type approval on a set of wheels produced in the UK (they are not TUV approved).
You need to follow the regulations of the destination market if you want to export.
Common sense.

[gotnorolex] 15/12/2019 10:59

"I'd like to see an end to the building of sprawling estates that only add to traffic congestion"........"quality apartments that take up less land"
Spot the incompatibility?

[poikka] 15/12/2019 10:42

All depends what the debt is used for - hopefully it would be to stimulate sustainable economic growth that would bring in more taxes.

Me, I'd like to see an end to the building of sprawling estates that only add to traffic congestion, and the instead the creation of residential, business and leisure centres, with green areas, based on quality apartments that take up less land and that can be combined with useful public transport systems.

Benefits: better quality of life; fewer emissions; less agricultural land used; less working time wasted in traffic jams; less chance of localised flooding; more chance of reaching CO2 targets, and so on.

Thing is, our housing and infrastructure 'planning' is just fire-fighting; whereas we should be looking 100 years ahead.

[maxk] 15/12/2019 10:36

Britain on collision course with EU over trade rules in Brexit talks

The PM is to reject the ‘level playing field’ on regulations and has ruled out a softer departure


Tim Shipman, Political Editor
December 15 2019, 12:01am,
The Sunday Times


Boris Johnson is on a collision course with Brussels when the second phase of Brexit negotiations open — as a former Downing Street aide warned that Whitehall is not “match fit” for the talks.

The prime minister will reject calls from EU leaders for Britain to accept a “level playing field” on regulations, which would mean the UK adopting many of the same rules as the rest of the bloc even after Brexit.

A senior figure in government dismissed claims that Johnson would use his new majority to abandon Brexiteers in the European Research Group (ERG) and pursue a softer Brexit. The source said it was “crazy” for people to say Johnson would allow an extension to the transition period, which is due to expire…



Paywall:

[chiefbrody] 15/12/2019 10:21

Lower rates. Great. More and more debt is not the answer Redwood.

[xxxxxy] 15/12/2019 09:27

An economic policy for the whole country

By JOHNREDWOOD | Published: DECEMBER 14, 2019

The first thing we need to spread growth and prosperity more widely around our country is a Central Bank in tune with current worldwide Central Bank thinking and concerned to promote growth.

From India to the USA, from Australia to Brazil, from Turkey to Mexico Central Banks have been cutting interest rates to stimulate more growth against a backdrop of world manufacturing recession.

In the last month the Fed has put $150bn into markets to facilitate more productive bank lending, whilst the ECB is now creating Euro20bn extra each month to boost money growth. The Bank of Japan remains on full throttle Quantitative easing.

The UK has the slowest rate of money growth in the advanced world thanks to the Bank of England’s do nothing policy. Time for the Bank to get with the mood of the country which wants more prosperity.

[maxk] 15/12/2019 09:22

Boris Johnson plans radical overhaul of civil service to guarantee 'people's Brexit'



Edward Malnick, sunday political editor
14 DECEMBER 2019 • 9:30PM


Boris Johnson is plotting a dramatic overhaul of Whitehall after his landslide election victory, in a drive to demonstrate that the Government “works for the people”.

Dominic Cummings, Mr Johnson’s chief aide, is to spearhead plans for radical reforms to the civil service, including a review of the processes for hiring and firing officials, to ensure Whitehall delivers the Prime Minister’s agenda.

He has previously complained that “almost no one is ever fired” in Whitehall, during a lecture in which he set out a “to-do list” he had maintained in case “I ever manage to get control of No 10.” It suggests Mr Johnson’s programme for the next five years is likely to be much more radical than the agenda he set out after taking over from Theresa May in July.

Separately, Downing Street dismissed suggestions from Brussels and pro-Remain campaigners that the Prime Minister would angle for a closer trading relationship with the EU, having gained an 80-strong majority that ends his reliance on hardline Brexiteer MPs.

Following the Conservative victory, some ministers claimed that Mr Johnson would seek to align Britain’s rules on the manufacturing of goods much closer to those of the EU in order to secure a favourable trade deal. But a senior Downing Street source said: “We are not going to soften Brexit or negotiate some high alignment model.”



More good stuff here:

[optomistic] 15/12/2019 09:03

jordaggy...what next are they going to find to extract funds from Lloyds!

[freddie01] 15/12/2019 08:54

Revealed: 4 MILLION Lloyds customers handed payouts for litany of blunders

Bosses launch hunt for the mole who leaked figures on full toll of compensation

Lloyds owed about £770m to 4.37m people at the end of August

Profits are still being weighed down by poor treatment of customers


Lloyds has launched an internal investigation into a leak that reveals a mountain of compensation claims at the bank.

Documents seen by The Mail on Sunday show Lloyds owed about £770million to an astonishing 4.37million people at the end of August – equal to around one in seven of its 30 million customers.

This was on top of payouts earmarked for mis-sold payment protection insurance.

The figures dwarf official complaints data, which show Lloyds received one million new gripes in the first six months of the year.

The bank said it had since paid compensation to the ‘vast majority’ of those affected.

However, a spokesman refused to reveal how many new redress cases have been added to the pile over the past three and a half months.

The leaked document identified a range of at least 19 outstanding problems at the end of August, including: botched affordability checks on loans, violated promises to freeze interest payments, wrongly rejecting PPI claims, failing to execute wills correctly, wrongly declaring customers were deceased and failing to link mortgage and home insurance payments made by the same customers.

City sources said bosses are extremely embarrassed that the true scale of the misconduct issues facing the bank has come to light only days after chief executive Antonio Horta-Osorio apologised for failing small businesses who were mis-sold loans.

The Portuguese boss has staked his reputation on cleaning up Britain’s largest bank. Analysts and investors have speculated that he will leave his post within the next few years, having been in charge since 2011.

But the document, leaked from the Lloyds Group Rectification Forum by an unidentified mole, shows profits are still being weighed down by poor treatment of customers.

The bank uses the Rectification Forum to assesses the ‘harm’ it has done to customers. The panel meets regularly to discuss new problems, how many people are affected and how much it must pay in compensation. It also calculates a running total of the number of customers owed redress. This figure is reported to the board and regulators but never made public.

The document from August showed the number of cases where compensation was owed was rising instead of declining as it paid out to those affected.

Lloyds owed redress to 3.97million customers at the end of 2018. It then handed payments to 2.58million customers. Yet it had amassed 3.54million new cases by the end of August.

Some of Lloyds’ most severe failings have hit its most vulnerable customers. It was set to pay out £219million to 631,000 customers after debt collectors failed to make sure their debt repayments would be affordable.

Lloyds also botched affordability checks on loans made to 857,922 customers, meaning it had to pay £174million in compensation.

And it continued charging interest to customers who had asked for a rate freeze because they had fallen into financial difficulties. The bank had to pay £32million to 517,328 customers.


Lloyds was also set to compensate 61,000 customers after it wrongly refused their claims for PPI. The bank told customers it did not have enough information on their policy to provide compensation. But it has since changed how it searches its databases and is handing out the repayments.

In addition, Lloyds is now finalising a review of customers affected by faulty automatic phone calls. It is thought that 64,434 customers underpaid on their mortgage and faced additional interest payments because the bank’s automated phone system quoted incorrect figures.

Other issues included failing to distribute wills correctly, wrongly indicating on accounts that customers were deceased, and failing to set up correctly accounts with linked mortgage and home insurance payments.

The litany of conduct issues suggests that redress payments will continue to erode Lloyds’ profits.

The bank issued a profit warning this year as its income was almost wiped out by a late surge in PPI claims. Its total bill currently stands at just under £22billion. But it also set aside an extra £600million for non-PPI payouts in 2018. Sources said the documents suggested these payouts could ramp up next year.

Horta-Osorio last week apologised for failing to issue proper compensation to small business owners ruined by corruption in a rogue unit at the bank’s Reading branch. An independent report by Sir Ross Cranston said its redress scheme had ‘serious shortcomings’.

The bank expects to pay out up to £300million in redress a year.

Yesterday a Lloyds Banking Group spokesman said of the new mountain of claims: ‘Undertaking a customer remediation is an exercise used by all banks to ensure fair outcomes for customers. It means that if we make an error, we address it and learn from how it happened.

‘We always establish if and how our customers have been affected and if they are impacted we ensure they are fully compensated where appropriate. The vast majority of customers impacted by these have received letters and remediation.’

[freddie01] 15/12/2019 08:51

Lloyds plan to cut chief executive's pay by £220,000

Banking group could spend £20m to raise retirement benefits for rest of staff


Lloyds Banking Group is proposing to slash its chief executive’s pay by £220,000 and spend £20m to raise retirement benefits for the rest of staff – only months after defending the boss’s bumper remuneration package.

The bank is consulting shareholders over plans to cut António Horta-Osório’s pension package, which earlier this year was worth nearly half of his £1.3m base salary before being trimmed to 33%. That compared with 13% offered to the rest of staff.

The proposals would mean the banks’s contribution to the chief executive’s pension being cut further, to 15% of salary from July 2020. Retirement benefits for the group’s 65,000 workforce would be raised to the same level, costing roughly £20m a year.


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The changes, if approved, mean Horta-Osório’s £419,000 pension package would be cut by more than half to about £190,000. It is understood that the bank is not planning to raise other parts of his pay package to offset the loss.

It signals a U-turn by Lloyds, which has previously defended his pay package despite mounting criticism from politicians, shareholders and City lobby groups, who have been agitating for pension payments to be brought in line with the rest of staff.

In June, executives were summoned to appear before the work and pensions committee by MPs, who accused the bank’s bosses of “boundless greed”. Horta-Osório defended his pay package by saying it was lower than offered to rivals at banks such as HSBC, while the bank’s remuneration committee chair claimed staff saw the boss as a “winner” and didn’t “resent the money” pocketed by the chief executive.

Horta-Osório’s total pay package last year, including bonuses and other incentives, was worth more than £6m.

Lloyds earlier this year cut his pension payments from 46% to 33% of salary. It also capped a portion of his pension, which is linked to his final salary, upon his request, although that move only cost Horta-Osório £3,000.

The Investment Association has been urging companies to bring executive pension pay below 25% of salary but has ramped up the pressure by setting a two-year deadline for companies to comply with the UK corporate governance code and bring executive pensions in line with the rest of the workforce.

The bank’s chief operating officer and chief financial officer are also given cash worth 25% of their salaries in pension payments. It is expected that their pay packets will also be cut if the proposals are approved.

Commenting on the news, which was first reported by the Financial Times, a Lloyds spokesman said: “In line with the regular three-year review of the group’s remuneration policy, we are consulting shareholders on all elements of the policy, including pension allowances.

“As stated before, the group will continue to support the guidelines set out by the Investment Association and, once approved by the board, the proposed new remuneration policy will be presented to shareholders for approval at the 2020 AGM.”

The proposals follow similar moves by Standard Chartered, which bowed to investor pressure earlier this month with plans to halve the £474,000 pension payout for its chief executive, Bill Winters, from January.

The changes proposed by Lloyds were welcomed by the trade unions representing staff. Rob MacGregor, a national officer for Unite, said: “Unite is clear that the changes announced today represent a progressive step in the right direction by Lloyds Banking Group and the union can only hope that it is the first of many such measures the employer will take when it comes to supporting employees and their pensions.

“The issue of income in retirement is for many, particularly younger members of staff, a remote and distant one but it’s an issue that needs to be tackled head-on.”

•This article was amended on 10 December 2019 to clarify that the Investment Association was urging executive pensions, not salaries, to be be brought in line with the rest of staff