HBOS / LLO TSB Merger - Opinions

Eyesparky

Money is a belief system ... sadly the banks have seen fit to stop believing in it for a while. HBOS have been driven down by the hedge funds in a speculative push ... there is a lot of money to be made in creating a market dynamic. Sadly the resultant monolyth of Lloyds TSB Halifax Bank of Scotland will likely remove a large amount of dynamism from the market going forward. Lloyds already suffer in terms of investment and dynamism ... they will need a radical shake up in management if they are to successfully exploit their position in the medium to long term.

beingjdc

minimike2 wrote: »

The thing is OW...the merger is totally unnecesary. HBOS is not in trouble as has been speculated. Nor is lloyds. Its conjecture that caused the run on HBOS shares. They are not another NR.

Why are people so gullible? Every company that has collapsed was "not in trouble" until five minutes before it went pop all over the markets.

HBOS have borrowed vast amounts of money and lent it out as mortgages. They only get that back a little bit at a time, but they need to roll over the money they've borrowed very often - possible over £100bn in the next six months or so.

With the price of the houses on which the mortgages are secured in freefall, and rising unemployment making the borrowers more likely to default, and less cash available in the money markets, it was going to be harder to get that.

Once they looked like they were in trouble, they were - because fewer people would have been interested in lending them any of that money. People were already pulling their savings out Northern Rock style.

There's no profiteering by HBOS here. This is a rescue, arranged at the highest levels of Government and Industry, to stop HBOS going under.

itsnothing

Well thats my job soon to be down the pan! In my city we have 2 Halifax's and 2 Lloyds in the city centre one of each literally stand by each other! then all together 3 Halifax branches, 4 Halifax agencies and around 5 Lloyds branches!
Great fun! Off job hunting with the other 1 million + !!

Dan_1976

This is wrong. If you ask me it is two banks wanting to get bigger and better and using this climate to its advantage. The Government will vito any block by the menopolies commission. What a joke!

The only people that will lose, are those who will be without jobs, and the general public. Again we are paying for the greed of the banks. But they have us by the short and curlys!

Frugaldom

Maybe the bidders at Sotheby's offloaded all their HBOS shares to fund their Damien Hirst art habit?

(tongue in cheek moment, sorry, couldn't help it )

phead

This is all about Gordon trying to save his political !!! and nothing to do with banking, HBOS just needed support not a takeover, and tomorrow the speculators will just move on to their next target.

A Scottish PM killing the oldest Scottish bank, you might as well take the scissors to the union jack right now.
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whiteflag_3

phead wrote: »

This is all about Gordon trying to save his political !!! and nothing to do with banking, HBOS just needed support not a takeover, and tomorrow the speculators will just move on to their next target.

A Scottish PM killing the oldest Scottish bank, you might as well take the scissors to the union jack right now.

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well ive heard some cobblers in my time but that takes the.........!

What would you have done then?

Which part of Scotland is Halifax in?

itsnothing

Halifax bank of scotland originated from the sometime yonks back!!!! Im more interested now in finding out what the job security is going to be like, redundancy, branch merging etc! Its not going to be good is it......

dempsey05

Can I just say that whilst I appreciate that this is a forum and everyone is entitled to their opinion and view, that this is a forum that has mortgage advisors from banks and bs on here not just brokers. There may be others like myself here who work for C&G and whilst we may just seem another part of the system to some we are actually also people who have mortgages and bills like everyone else. We are worrying enough at the moment about whether we will be losing our jobs right now so people hoping that Lloyds 'get rid' of C&G is a little insensitive right now. Brokers can annoy me sometimes (I said sometimes before you flame me ) but I would never wish that they were gone and out of jobs because of it.

I don't mean to sound on my high horse and I know you will get comments from all perspectives here but I just needed to get it off my chest.

poppy10_2

itsnothing wrote: »

Im more interested now in finding out what the job security is going to be like, redundancy, branch merging etc! Its not going to be good is it......

Potentially 40,000 job losses and 1,000 branch closures according to the Times

The problem is the two banks are so similar, so there are no real synergies to be had. There's no point the new megabank having a Halifax branch and a Lloyds TSB branch on the same high street, so inevitably one of them will close with subsequent jobs losses; this will be repeated in high streets across the country.

I really don't see what's in it for Lloyds, particularly why they are paying double the price they could buy HBoS for in the open market. I suspect there is some underhand government bribery/backing going on, as in Bank of America's dubious takeover of Merrill Lynch for several times their stock market value.

Longer term, if the new bank survives, it will be a huge behemoth which crushes competition and leads to a worse deal for customers.