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[MSE Lawrence]

This is the discussion to link on the back of Martin's blog. Please read the blog first, as this discussion follows it.

Read Martin's "How do you buy British in banking?" Blog.

Click reply to discuss below.

[astreix]

I don't get the argument that buying british when it come to banking helps jobs in this country.

Banks which might not have British ownership, still have people for day to day operations based in UK the same as if they were British owned. In case of Abbey for example, because they now have a spanish owner, all jobs haven't moved to spain.

Even ICICI which is the subsidiary of an indian bank, has branches and people employed in the UK for its UK business. OK the call centre is probably in Mumbai or Bangalore, but that could have been the case even if it was British owned. Barclays which is a British bank sometimes back transferred lots of back office jobs to India to save cost.

So does it really matter from a job creation point of view who the owner of the bank is?

[Fudge1977]

Hmmm. Maybe my comment on the ICICI thread wasn't too well thought out but it was made with best intentions.

The point I was trying to make was that the ownership probably shouldn't be pointed out as, assuming the levels of cover are adequate, it doesn't matter. Having said that, as a suggestion, I wondered whether it was worth referencing British banks as and when they come up. On reflection, that could possibly look even more xenophobic!

Martin made an excellent point about international banking and highlighted that it wasn't that easy.... good point well made.

So, I'm still buying locally, i'm still buying British where I can do and I appreciate that my money stashed in a Shanghai bank account would be better off in a Spanish one because they'd give me £100 to move! (i've had good service - i'll never be rich!)

On another note I want to point out that I work for a charity and have been fortunate to see how extremely lucky we are that banks, regardless of ultimate ownership, often invest heavily in the communities that they serve. I don't want to open up a discussion about alterior motives but they put a great deal back in to many projects and don't often get thanked.

[MSE Martin]

Hi Fudge,

Please don't think I was having a go - I thought it was an interesting point - but wanted to show the difference between the theory and the practice. Much like "what is buying a UK car"; deciding to stick within national purchase values for many products these days is difficult.

Martin

[Fudge1977]

Hi Martin,

Not at all - it's a really good point that I hadn't considered at the time.

The analogy of car production is a good one. I guess if we want to go an a moral crusade, then we can bank where there are British branches / call centres regardless of ownership. And we can drive there in a Nissan Qashquai.... Japanese owned but built in Britain!

Loving your work!

Chris

[Mozette]

How about Nationwide? Another bonus being that they're not a bank!

[wenyi]

If British people choose to use only "British-owned! banks, and the rest of the world reciprocated, it would hurt Britain far more than most other countries.

Apart from the difficulty of identifying what "British" is in this context, the UK does far more banking business abroad than "foreign" banks do in the UK.

What's sauce for the goose, etc!

Wenyi

[JimmyTheWig]

Surely the answer is Northern Rock or NS&I. Not that I've got anything with either.

[siliconbits]

Interestingly this also applies to utilities, cars and even cosmetics. Most are foreign owned anyway, more often than not by the Frenchies: Garnier, L'oreal, Renault, Airbus, GDF/EDF, Orange, Peugeot. Buying British sometimes may be very, very difficult.

[wife-spent-it-all]

A few years ago i went into the toilets at our local Tesco and they had one of their notices up about always checking the condition of the toilets, etc

At the bottom of this notice was their slogan "Every Little Helps". Some bright spark had got out their marker pen and blacked out the first and last letter so the slogan then became "very little help" - far more accurate methinks!

[prowla]

Well, I try and buy British and all that, but I had a run-in with an unpleasant (British) chap at Marbles the other day and complained, and got a letter back saying they had no record of the conversation.
I'm now looking for another credit card.
It is difficult to buy British when you are faced with crap and insulting customer service.

[eponline]

For the record, I beleive HSBC are actually fairly British, despite the name.

HSBC were set up as a British company operating out of Hong Kong to help British companies facilitate trade with Chinese companies. They later took over Midland bank who were also British and adopted the branches, logo, etc. Originally it was a similar set up to someone like Standard Chartered Bank, who have no real presence in the UK but are a totally British company nonetheless.

The shareholders are mostly British, the head office is Canary Wharf, the IT platforms and major systems are UK based (Sheffield). To be honest you'd be hard pressed to find a more British bank of a similar scale.

(Yes, I used to work for HSBC!)

[torbrex]

One point that springs to mind, would it cause Santander any trouble if everyone in Britain withdrew all their money at the same time from their 'British' banks?

[hwykes]

I think this is a very good discussion Martin. I have to say that a lot of people think about "British" with some sort of emotion and therefore fail to be rational when it comes to their own economic interests. If you rationally think about it, we should be buying whoever offers the best value balanced against the risk. The trouble with British businesses struggle to be competitive with extortionate British labour costs. I do like the patriotism displayed here about "buying British" but such naivity in my view is what lets British businesses make suckers out of their customers. People need to realise that these may be "British" (if at all given ownership structures) but before that they are businesses who need to make a profit.

[sanbikinoraion]

As Wenyi said, if we all only bought British, and everyone else did the same, we'd be stuffed!

Global trade has made all of us phenomenally richer than we would have been if we'd simply been 'self sufficient', which is why I'm wary when any politician claims on the telly that we should be self-sufficient in anything.

Think about it! We don't require individuals or families or towns to be completely self-sufficient as they had to be in centuries' past: we don't each have to go and tend our few strips of land and hope for good crops this year, then spend our evenings darning our old clothes and that's a really good thing.

Buy British? Buy foreign, I say!

[surreyman]

What about the banks now owned by the British Government? Surely, they must be British!

[gtx]

bit late joining this discussion.

i work for barclays - a 'british bank' with CEO John Varley also being british but after him the top guys and girls are all american - one recently brought in from citibank.

even as staff i find this ironic given the state of americas economy