Lloyds Banking Share Discussion Threads

[bbalanjones] 01/12/2019 10:42

maxk: Any Govt. has to bear some responsibility: Labour eased some fiscal rules whilst the ConYou party clamoured for much looser control.

[gotnorolex] 01/12/2019 10:42

BB get ready for relationship counselling after SNP dilution, and smart Scottish rejection of leaving the Union for the polygamous 27!

[grahamite2] 01/12/2019 10:41

1. No-one has ever claimed Labour caused the 2007/8 Financial Crash. What has been claimed, and correctly, is that Labour profligacy in the decade leading up to the crash left this country much less able to weather the storm than it otherwise would have been.

2. The Lloyds HBOS merger saved HBOS but it bloody didn't save Lloyds! It didn't even save the merged operation.

3. Don't socialists make any effort at all to check their facts? Do they just come up with the first thing that pops into their heads?

[jordaggy] 01/12/2019 10:36

I thought Boris was excellent, Marr was irritating and too impatient.

[bbalanjones] 01/12/2019 10:34

I have never heard any Labour politician challenge the 'received wisdom' from the Conservatives that Labour caused the 2007/8 Financial Crash. We all know it was a World scale event initiated by sub-prime American Mortgages being wrapped in Bonds, gullibly marketed and bought worldwide.
What Labour did was limit the damage to our economy by supporting and thus 'saving' from failing, several of our largest financial institutions. Including Lloyds/BoS by merger. As a long term shareholder I can belatedly say "Thank You". You do not really deserve all the SH!T heaped on you since by Conservative lies and propaganda.

[jordaggy] 01/12/2019 10:32

Lloyds needs to sharpen their act. Where are the fruits of the 3 billion they are investing in 'new technology' ?

[utrickytrees] 01/12/2019 10:22

More lies are told during a war, after a hunt & before an election.
Otto von Bismark.

[bargainbob] 01/12/2019 10:19

That was a car crash , not me guv , we are the new conservatives lol

[bbalanjones] 01/12/2019 10:09

On Andrew Marr : Boris the embarrassing : "Not me Guv! I was not there!" Bare-faced liar in concert.

[utrickytrees] 01/12/2019 10:01

Bargainbob ive done extensive reseach & as far as i can see the only benefit to having Scotland onside is a geopolitical one.... heading the Russian subs off at the pass.
By the time Scotland manage to get their dept/gdp ratio down to the sort of levels required for EU integration, not only will the EU have an army but probably a Navy as well, a fleet of pink submarines ready to engage in a spot of hot Russian action at HMNB Clyde no doubt.

[bargainbob] 01/12/2019 09:38

U trickytrees or wood for brains .

Suspect England would struggle without Scotland. Do a little research.

[gotnorolex] 01/12/2019 09:33

Book your seats at the coliseum for the new kid and Min!

[utrickytrees] 01/12/2019 09:22

Jl5,took your advice & signed up here, your right seems to be devoid of moderators! , would you let Boomer know that Attenborough eats meat and has a dual fuel Morso log burner which can burn coal. As far as im concerned nothing more needs to be said on climate change. 👍

[utrickytrees] 01/12/2019 09:03

Interesting xxxxy, so austerity had nothing to do with the Tories it was infact an imposition from the EU to get us back within the 3.5% debt/ GDP ratio they require. Why hasnt the UK imposed those same restrictions on the jocks I wonder? We'd have been perusing a wealth & prosperity agenda years ago, with Scotlands wings clipped & London in control of their finances.
The jocks need to brace themselves lets hope with the Tories get enough of a majority so that Javid gets a good 5 years to do a proper job on them. Starting with Blackfords head on a stake outside the HOC.

[diku] 01/12/2019 08:57

Laurel and Hardy double act...

As for Lloy...chart is looking good to 66p - 67p...

[mikemichael2] 01/12/2019 08:48

Minerve 2 and SentimentRules, same foul mouth drunk.

[xxxxxy] 01/12/2019 08:14

Prosperity not austerityBy JOHNREDWOOD | Published: DECEMBER 1, 2019When the new government announced its economic aim is to promote growth and prosperity it heralded a most important change. It was a change I had pressed for for several years, meeting with disapproval  from Mr Hammond.The old government had as its main aim the reduction of  debt as a proportion of GDP. This requirement of the Maastricht EU Treaty forced the government to constrain public spending too much and to keep tax rates too high. Indeed it often encouraged Mr Osborne and Mr Hammond to impose new taxes that were economically damaging, like their Stamp Duty and vehicle Excise Duty hikes which hit the homes and car markets.Now the promotion of growth is the aim it allows the government to make selective increases in public spending in areas like health and schools where increased capacity and higher quality requires more and better paid staff. It will also require more tax cuts on earning and on transactions in our economy.The official machine has clearly hit back a  bit against the welcome revolution. It has  placed a weaker version of the debt control back into the fiscal framework saying that over a five year period state debt as a proportion of GDP should decline. This is an improvement on needing  an update of the position of state debt every time there is a  new forecast with adjustments made in the short term. At each forecast there is an OBR admonition and a new pledge from government to get the debt down.  I support the control that says all current public spending must be paid for out of tax revenues. Allowing borrowing for capital investment is fine. It does require good capital investment assessments and good controls over build costs and project management. Some of these need improving as the government plans more public investment.Meanwhile we await some signs from the UK economic establishment that they recognise the rest of the world is engaged in a battle to prevent the slowdown turning into something worse. Today's problem is not the threat of too much inflation, but too little activity. The rest of the world is cutting taxes, boosting liquidity and cutting interest rates. The world should escape recession as a result.In the Eurozone Mrs Lagarde has stated that she thinks the negative interest rates, money creation and bond buying they are still doing is as far as the ECB can go. She wants some fiscal relaxation to boost growth.

[utrickytrees] 01/12/2019 06:26

The only way SNP will be leading the rest of us is economic meltdown & drug induced psychosis . Jock defecit/ gdp running at TWICE the allowable rate for EU members & the highest in Europe at about 7%!! 50% of UK's total borrowing is spent on 10% of our population.... the sweaties. & Before anyone says what about the tax revenues on oil, the oils the UK's, witjout BP the Jocks could never get it out the ground Id actually be prepared to give Scotland hslf of the oil once they paid off their Natoonal Debt just to get rid of them.
Let the Jocks lead the way, the EU wont touch the basket cases with a barge poll & the rest of the UK will be glad to see the back of them.

[maxk] 30/11/2019 23:33

What does the the term "rehabilitated" actually mean?

[sentimentrules] 30/11/2019 21:50

I'd love to see a Corbyn led gov. The political experiment of the century

[minerve 2] 30/11/2019 21:30

"but what it does not do is put money into the system to make sure that people who have have committed offences are rehabilitated."

Too busy giving Irish bungs and tax reliefs to those that don't need it to be concerned about areas where real funding is needed.

Tory party = buy the votes party.

[mr.elbee] 30/11/2019 21:29

The dominance of high street brands remains unaltered despite hi-tech start-ups

When Dame Jayne-Anne Gadhia’s daughter’s friends recently asked her for advice on which bank they should join, the former Virgin Money boss was surprised by the list of exotic options the teenagers reeled off. In their circle, Britain’s biggest banks didn’t even get a look in.

“I thought they may say ‘Nationwide or Lloyds?’ but they were only interested in the new banks. ‘Should I go to Monzo or N26?’” says Gadhia.

Taxpayer-backed Royal Bank of Scotland is now hoping to make its way into such conversations after launching its own digital bank Bó, a standalone app which launched last week in an attempt to compete with popular start-ups such as Monzo and tech giants that have come into the market such as Apple.





Yet there is two persistent problems in the so-called “challenger221; bank sector. First, none of these banks – the likes of Monzo, TSB, Metro Bank, Virgin Money and Starling – are doing much to dent the dominance of Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds and RBS, Britain’s Big Four. Second, very few are making any money.

Just as Bó made its official debut, TSB announced sweeping job cuts and branch closures, Virgin Money unveiled a full-year loss and ditched payouts to investors, Paragon Bank was involved in an email blunder and Zopa scrambled to raise money so that it could officially become a bank.

It wasn’t supposed to be this difficult. The public’s trust in established banks plummeted after the financial crisis, paving the way for new entrants to shake up the market. Vernon Hill, the Metro Bank founder said just after the launch of his bank in 2010 that big UK lenders were naive not to be scared of new players, comparing the lack of fear to HP and Dell not being fussed about Apple before it became the largest technology company in the world.


Fast-forward five years and it is the American billionaire who is starting to look naive. Setting up the UK’s first high-street bank in 100 years seemed like an obvious move at the time (although Hill told us in 2013 he created Metro because “it’s what Americans do”).

In his eyes slow-coach Britain was being run by a cartel of banks that used IT systems “one step up from a quill” and where opening a bank account was like “having your teeth drilled”.

Challenging the scandal-hit Big Four looked like an easy job for an entrepreneur that had already set up four US lenders. In contrast to the sluggish banks UK taxpayers had been forced to rescue after the crash, Metro’s money machines, dog biscuits and 7-day a week branch banking was radical.

Yet there is now just one month to go before Hill steps down from Metro’s board following a disastrous year in which a major accounting gaffe has left investors nursing huge losses. It isn’t the end to 2019 that Metro’s club of ultra-wealthy shareholders had anticipated, given Craig Donaldson, its chief executive, once said 2019 will be the time the bank enters the FTSE 100.

Although Metro has swung to a loss for the first nine months of the year and has seen its value fall from a peak of £3.5bn to just over £300m, it is far from the only one struggling to conquer the Big Four.

Last week Virgin Money postponed its dividend to investors after posting a £200m loss while troubled TSB unveiled plans to axe branches and slash 400 jobs after publishing a humiliating report into its 2018 IT crisis.

Banking start-ups such as Monzo and Starling have never made a profit and now have to fight against Bó, launched with all the benefits of a big bank behind it. One Monzo insider insists the company is not afraid of the “knock-offR21; app from RBS, which informally approached Monzo about a takeover two years ago.

Metro Bank's former chairman Vernon Hill
Metro Bank's former chairman Vernon Hill CREDIT: JOHN STILLWELL/PA
Bank bosses are now starting to privately sympathise with some of their struggling peers. One chief executive of a UK bank says he believes some rules introduced after the financial crisis are holding many small players back.

Metro, for example, was forced to turn to investors for more money earlier this year in order to meet a crucial Bank of England deadline requiring banks to hold extra cash. The generous terms of its capital raise is expected to cost it around £33m a year, meaning it is unlikely to turn a profit until 2021.

“We need more competition in the banking market, I really feel for Metro,” the banking veteran says. “We’ve been watching it closely since the day it started as it’s an intriguing look into the world of smaller banks. Expensive regulatory rules are holding some banks back.”

Another post-crisis rule known as ringfencing, aimed at protecting retail customers from risky investment banking activities by splitting the divisions in two, has also made it difficult for smaller players to compete.

Insiders at Goldman Sachs, one of the biggest banks in the world, say that even the Wall Street giant is trying to slow the UK growth of its consumer bank Marcus so that it doesn’t cross the £25bn threshold that would force it to comply with the expensive and complicated rules.


Gadhia argues that the creation of ringfenced banks has also boosted Britain’s Big Four as their retail divisions now have more money to lend and so can offer the most competitive mortgages.

“The big banks, especially HSBC, are having to deploy their massive, low cost deposit book in the UK post ringfencing – and they get a better return out of selling low cost mortgages,” she says. “The big banks can [also] pay innovative tech people as well as the tech companies. They can win in the war for talent.”

Banks lobby group UK Finance has already called for rules to be relaxed for smaller players so that they have a better chance of competing although John Cronin, a banks analyst at Goodbody, says no politician will want to be seen to be “doing the banking industry a favour”.

If challengers continue struggling to grow, many expect there to be a wave of takeovers in the sector after Brexit. A sale of TSB by Spain’s Sabadell is widely viewed as one of the most likely options, while some in the banking industry have suggested that there could be a bumper tie-up between a group of challengers, potentially led by Virgin Money following its tie-up with CYBG last October.

There have been ongoing rumours around who might be interested in Metro while Co-op Bank, which is still in recovery after a brush with collapse in 2013, approached Barclays late last year but talks did not progress beyond the exploratory stage.

“The door is just not open to more competition in traditional banking,” says Goodbody’s Cronin. “Like in many other industries, banking is a scale game – with regulation forcing the end of the entrepreneur, not the start of it.”