Lloyds Banking Share Discussion Threads

[scruff1] 05/12/2020 11:49

Juan Mata - Suddenly a Footballer

[alphorn] 05/12/2020 11:45

G2 - I should have known - wrong type of leaves.

ROFLMAO

[minerve 2] 05/12/2020 11:43

Anyone got a certain read lined-up over Christmas? Be interested to hear, whatever the subject.

[minerve 2] 05/12/2020 11:43

I've bought two 'investment books' to read over Christmas:

Deals of Warren Buffett: Volume 1
Deals of Warren Buffett: Volume 2

Both written by Glen Arnold who himself is a professor of investment and professor of corporate finance. I have read quite a few books of his in the past and they are all excellent. With forewards by Lawrence A. Cunningham - another excellent investment writer - if they stand-up to their promise they will be excellent reads. I'm looking forward to it sat by the Christmas tree and log burner, or in my study's reclining leather - and of course, with a tipple or two. :)

[grahamite2] 05/12/2020 11:35

Rhodesia was not one of the great powers of the world. It had certain special problems that do not apply to the UK. The two cases are not in any way comparable.

[alphorn] 05/12/2020 11:26

scruff - he used the same words over UDI. Little different to many of you here today. You are just blinkered.

[alphorn] 05/12/2020 11:24

lef - using your French handle? True colours I suspect. ;)

Le frêne, arbre du genre Fraxinus, appartient à la famille des Oléacées ; une soixantaine d'espèces de frênes sont connues, elles vivent essentiellement dans les forêts tempérées.

Utrickytrees in drag.

[xxxxxy] 05/12/2020 11:20

Lloyds Banking Group (LLOY.L) is to redeploy 700 employees into full-time working from home positions in 2021 despite the UK approving a COVID-19 vaccine.The UK's biggest lender already has 50,000 of its 65,000 staff working from home due to the pandemic.Previously, it temporarily moved about 1,000 workers from Lloyds, Halifax and Bank of Scotland branches to customer service teams, in order to cope with a surge in demand in areas such as telephone banking and video chats during COVID-19."All colleagues will need to be able to work from home for the customer services role," according to documents seen by the Guardian.Employees may still be asked to come into the office for special occasions including team meetings. The bank said that "eligibility to meet the criteria needed to work from home" will need to be met on an "ongoing basis", adding "please consider this carefully when making your preference."According to the documents, the remote working option presented "opportunities for colleagues to help better manage their work-life balance." Meaning that employees will not have to live near one of Lloyds' call centres in cities including Leeds, Liverpool or Belfast, in order to apply for the jobs.A Lloyds spokesperson said it was shifting employees in response to customer behaviour: "We are asking our branch colleagues if they would like to make a move from their branch role to one in our customer services teams."This means we can have the right amount of support in the areas our customers want it."One of the group's staff unions, Accord, welcomed plans to redeploy branch staff to remote working customer service roles, saying it would help save jobs. "Working from home in the long term isn't suitable for everybody but we'll work to ensure that there are support services in place to help everybody to make a success of this positive initiative," it said.So far, the group has announced around 2,000 job cuts since September as part of its restructuring plan.READ MORE: BP sells its London head office as it shifts to low-carbon energyIt comes as around 75% of City firms are reviewing their real estate footprint following the demand in remote areas brought on by the pandemic.In a sign that big banks are embracing remote work, NatWest (NWG.L) has told 50,000 of its roughly 60,000 employees will continue working from home at least until April 2021, when it will allow for more flexible working.Barclays (BARC.L) has also said that it is reviewing the amount of office space it uses after seeing 30,000 of its 50,000 employees effectively work from home.Other banks, including Standard Chartered (STAN.L) are also moving to flexible working on a permanent basis, after a pan-bank review of all jobs that showed 80% across the business are suitable for "hybrid" working.The bank's staff are able to apply for the preferred way of working from early 2021. This applies to its 2,000 staff in the capital - where about 10% of workers have been going into the office since the onset of the pandemic.Meanwhile, US lender bank JP Morgan (JPM), which has 19,000 staff in the UK has raised concerns about the impact of remote working, including the lack of mentoring for young staff and a small drop in productivity on Mondays and Fridays. Despite that, JP expects up to 30% of its roughly 257,000 global workers to work from home in future, at least part of the time.... Yahoo Finance

[xxxxxy] 05/12/2020 11:10

EUSSR. Goodbye and good riddance to bad rubbish.

[xxxxxy] 05/12/2020 11:09

EXCLUSIVE: "We can and must act now, to protect the UK from the Eurozone"Part Two of the first readable summary of the EU's 'level playing field' economic hypocrisy?© Brexit Facts4EU.Org 2020Professor David Blake explains it in everyday language for MPs and ordinary votersA Brexit Facts4EU.Org two-part special - Part TwoRead yesterday's Part One hereThis two-part article is about the euro and how the EU has used it to benefit the 19 Eurozone countries – especially Germany – and to damage the UK. In his second piece below, Professor Blake shows what needs to be done about the 'level playing field'.BREXIT FACTS4EU.ORG SUMMARYIn Part One of his article yesterday he explained:How the EU's Euro currency has been used to dump its goods at artificially-reduced prices onto the UK and world markets for yearsHow this has increased the massive trade deficit which the UK has with the EUHow Germany has benefited most of allToday, Professor Blake explains:The risks of the Euro to the UK and the WorldThe opportunities for Brexit Britain to counter the threat and deal with itAbout the author: David Blake is Professor of Finance at City, University of London, and is a member of Economists for Free Trade. He has been published regularly in the Daily Telegraph, Financial News, City AM, CAPX, and others, and is writing here in a personal capacity."WE CAN AND MUST ACT NOW, TO PROTECT THE UK FROM THE EUROZONE"By Professor David Blake, 04 Dec 2020?© Brexit Facts4EU.Org 2020Reminder from Part One: The European Union is seeking a 'level playing field' with the UK after Brexit. One of the key issues concerning the EU is 'dumping'. It is worried that the UK will become a super-competitive, de-regulated 'Singapore-on-Thames', undercutting the prices of products produced in the EU.In fact the opposite is the case and below are some threats but also some opportunities.Here is what the UK could doThe UK government has introduced a Trade Bill which will establish a new Trade Remedies Authority (TRA) to prevent countries from dumping cheap goods onto the UK market and potentially putting key domestic industries out of business.The Bill may have been intended to target China, in particular, but trade remedies can be levied against any World Trade Organisation member, including the EU, whether or not there is a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in place.The EU wants its unfair practices to continue, tying the UK into EU lawWe are told that the EU 'holds all the cards' in the trade negotiations with the UK. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen says the EU is "ready to design a new partnership with zero tariffs, zero quotas, zero dumping" with the UK.The EU's current treaty-based proposal for avoiding trade dumping would involve the UK applying EU law. This includes (extraordinarily and uniquely in international trade between properly sovereign nations) the application of that law as interpreted by the European Court of Justice.?© EU ParliamentThis would have the effect of permanently advantaging Germany and other Eurozone (EZ) member state beneficiaries and continuing an arrangement that is demonstrably unfair to the UK.It is quite shocking that the new German president of the European Commission calls for zero dumping, when her own country is one of the world's biggest dumpers of goods onto world markets.The UK's massive deficit with the EU, due to the euroThe UK has always run a trade deficit with EU, but the chart below shows that prior to the introduction of the euro in 1999, the size of the deficit was relatively small at around 0.25% of GDP. But since then, the deficit has ballooned to nearly 4% of GDP. The chart shows a strong downward trend and that trend shows no sign of ending. By contrast, we have a trade surplus with non-EU states and that surplus is on a strong upward trend. And most of the trade with with non-EU states is conducted on World Trade Organization (WTO) terms and hence involves tariffs.This chart conclusively demonstrates that sterling is not overvalued (otherwise the trade surplus with non-EU states would not be increasing year-on-year), but that the euro is significantly undervalued.?© House of Commons Library: Research briefing 10 Nov 2020, 'Statistics on UK-EU Trade'A trade deal on the basis of the current structural undervaluation of the euro will only entrench the EU's structural trade surplus with the UK. The undervalued euro acts as a trade subsidy to firms from within these countries, giving them an advantage over global competitors.We can and must act now to protect UK interestsThis cannot be permitted to continue and the solutions are clear. The trade agreement currently being negotiated with the EU is a trap from which we could never exit if Boris Johnson signs it. We can and must act now, to protect the UK from the Eurozone. The Withdrawal Agreement (WA) must be rescinded and Parliament must pass legislation, such as the Internal Market Bill and the Finance Bill, which reverses the appalling consequences of the WA for the unity of the UK.?© No.10Especially important is the Trade Bill and the introduction of the Trade Remedies Authority (TRA) which will allow the UK to conduct its own dumping and subsidies investigations. The TRA's first task should be to take a very close look at the structurally undervalued euro. This potentially violates two areas of international law: dumping and subsidies.First, Article VI of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) points out that multiple currency practices can 'constitute a form of dumping by means of a partial depreciation of a country's currency', thereby benefitting EZ exporters unfairly. The anti-dumping remedy in this case is the imposition by the importing state of an additional duty on the dumped goods.Second, artificially low currencies could amount to an export subsidy and therefore breach the WTO's Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (SCM).Had the euro been correctly valued, then EZ exports to the UK in 2018 would have been lower by between £67.2bn and £88.4bn. The UK would therefore be entitled to impose an annual anti-dumping duty on the EZ in that range. We should note that China just imposed anti-dumping duties of between 107%-212% on Australian wine.?Trading on WTO termsFinally, we should not be afraid of trading with the EU on WTO terms. Although this would involve tariffs, the average tariff is low, at around 3%. The benefit is that we would escape the myriad traps that the EU has set for us.And trading with the rest of the world on WTO terms has done us no harm at all. In addition, we will be able to negotiate FTAs with these other countries and this will remove tariffs with them altogether.Part Two of a two-part article by Professor David BlakeDon't miss Part One which we ran in yesterday's edition of Facts4EU.Org.Note: This two-part series is the result of a collaboration between Facts4EU.Org and Professor Blake with the aim of publishing a short and accessible version of his much longer academic paper. The full version of Professor Blake's 23-page paper can be found here or here.OBSERVATIONSThe EU's unreasonable demands and behaviourThe trade talks were paused yesterday, having become deadlocked after the EU suddenly increased its demands on Thursday. The details of these demands have not been officially released by either side, although there have been various off-the-record hints by diplomats and government spokesmen.Whatever the details, one thing is clear. The EU is a very long way from treating the UK like a free, independent, and sovereign country. Against this background, the precise percentages of fish that will continue to be taken from UK waters are – forgive us – a red herring. The reality is much simpler. There never has been a level playing field for the UK, and the EU now wish to entrench this in a treaty. It also demands that the UK obeys its diktats, making the idea of the UK becoming a sovereign nation again a non-starter.The EU's uneven playing fieldIn his two-part article, Professor Blake has demonstrated how the EU has used its structurally undervalued Euro currency to dominate trade between the bloc and the UK. In doing so he has shown the shocking scale of the EU's duplicity in demanding a 'level playing field', tying the UK into EU laws and regulations.The playing field has always been uneven, in part because of because of the reasons Professor Blake has outlined above, and also because of the fact that the EU has almost always acted in the interests of its continental members and has sidelined the UK's national interests.With the exception of the UK's first year of membership the UK has only ever subsidised the EU. This is clear from the official declarations of the UK's net annual contributions to Brussels, but Professor Blake has explained how the true costs started ballooning when the EU created its artificial currency, the euro.We hope you found this two-part series has helped to illuminate a misunderstood and ignored aspect to the EU's treatment of the United Kingdom. If the UK does in fact leave the EU as a sovereign country in 26 days' time, it will be able to start the long process of redress. If Mr Johnson fudges a 'deal' and fails to rescind the Withdrawal Agreement, then it will be more or less 'business as usual with Treasure Island' for the European Union.And that would be truly unforgiveable, Prime Minister.Professor Blake and other senior economists have been working to get this message out to MPs and voters for a long time, but articles about economics have never been a easy sell. We would like to thank Professor Blake for shedding some light on this important subject for ordinary voters and MPs for the first time.Finally, as ever we must appeal for your help to keep going. Covid and its impacts have hit the level of donations we receive. If you can, (and especially if you have never donated to us in the last five years), please make a donation today, no matter how small. We rely 100% on the generosity of people like you. Quick, secure, and confidential donation links are below. Thank you so much.[ Sources: Professor David Blake ] Politicians and journalists can contact us for details, as ever.Brexit Facts4EU.Org, Sat 05 Dec 2020

[scruff1] 05/12/2020 11:08

Ian Douglas Smith a tad weaker Alp !!

[minerve 2] 05/12/2020 11:08

"Brexiteers will sleep just fine when this country is once again free, independent, sovereign."


........to trade on WTO rules.



:)

[lefrene] 05/12/2020 11:07

I was fishing Alp :¬) The bait worked really fast :¬)

[minerve 2] 05/12/2020 11:06

Tygarreg

Your understanding is slightly wrong.

The intrinsic value of the commodity remains the same on a falling $. So if the $ falls its price in $ increases. The reasons driving a lower $ may or may not eventually end-up affecting commodity prices. As the intrinsic value of the commodity remains the same the £ buyer - even though he can buy more $ - sees no real difference in commodity price.

Also, US manufacturing maybe cheaper with a falling $ but that will depend upon the make-up of their products and services. If a US manufacturer depends largely upon components sourced abroad their manufacturing costs increase on a $ basis.

And it goes the same with dividends. I have Philip Morris in my portfolio - actually it is one of my largest holdings. A falling $ does make the dividends lower on a £ vs $ basis but equally, seeing as Philip Morris revenue is nearly all non-US (they have a license agreement with Altria), a falling $ increases earnings on a $ basis because it is world-wide income. Sort of swings and roundabouts. I read an interesting article once about whether you should hedge portfolios to remove currency risk - if you are a general equity investor - the conclusion was not to bother on large internationals.

[alphorn] 05/12/2020 11:06

lef - very weak, even for you.

[alphorn] 05/12/2020 11:05

G2 - are you the reincarnation of Ian Douglas Smith? He said exactly the same thing.

[lefrene] 05/12/2020 11:03

Macron and Barnier decide to set up a chain of fish and fritte shops, they then tell the owner of the fish that they are entitled to steal them, just because they are French. The owner of the fish tells them to take a hike, Macron and Barnier throw a temper tantrum and make threats, again.

[grahamite2] 05/12/2020 10:47

Brexiteers will sleep just fine when this country is once again free, independent, sovereign. Just fine.

[tygarreg] 05/12/2020 10:44

The US Dollar is weakening by the day. It's gone from 1.20 to 1.35 to the pound in recent weeks. This will make worldwide commodity prices a lot cheaper which doesnt help miners, it makes any dividends paid in dollars worth less to us. It makes US manufacturing more competitive and cheapens our raw materials like ore and oil in uk! Interesting dynamics!

[scruff1] 05/12/2020 10:36

Dont like getting involved in these interpersonal things but I do have to take exception here minnie. 'I dont mind which way it goes' . Whats caused the big change?

[scruff1] 05/12/2020 10:31

That's if anything is solved by easter. Beginning to wonder whether Brexit negotiations are a bit like Covid. We gonna have to live it cos no one has the balls to sort it.

[minerve 2] 05/12/2020 10:31

We will be free. We will be sovereign. We will be able to choose to trade under WTO rules rather than choosing to trade free under EU rules!

LOL!

What numpties.