sky = hbos - lloyds deal done!

WTF?_2

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/business/nothing-can-possibly-go-wrong-with-gigantic-new-bank-200809181264/

NOTHING CAN POSSIBLY GO WRONG WITH GIGANTIC NEW BANK

HBOS and Lloyds TSB last night created a monstrous new banking entity safe in the knowledge that nothing can possibly go wrong.
..

Meanwhile Downing Street sources let it be known the prime minister played a key part in securing the deal which will put 40,000 people out of work.


The Daily Mash is actually printing stuff now that is more accurate than the proper media...... :eek:

baby_boomer

mystic_trev wrote: »

Hope this works?

Do you do cartoons for the Sun? They went with this exactly this idea as a future LloydsTSBHalifaxBankofScotland publicity campaign.

Whereas the Times quite rightly had Howard being trampled by a Black Horse.

Plasticman

!!!!!!? wrote: »

Absolutely - the current fad in the media and with politicians is to blame short sellers for everything. It certainly couldn't have been years of laissez-faire fiscal policy and looking the other way whilst the banking system gorged itself silly on loony loans and dodgy credit, oh no!

If HBOS was in good shape, it would not have had to be taken over.

As you say, lower share price is a symptom of the problem, not the reason why it ended up being taken over.

Alex Salmond says...........

'I am very angry that we can have a situation where a bank can be forced into a merger by basically a bunch of short-selling spivs and speculators in the financial markets,'

So the fact that the bank is taking risks that it can't afford to take has got nothing to do with it :rolleyes: Funny how (prudent) Lloyds didn't have problems with the speculators and spivs. Probably becuase the spivs were busy running HBOS.

neverdespairgirl

dopester wrote: »

Glad you're back NDG. Hope you enjoyed the beach/surfing.

Thanks, we had a wonderful time.

dopester

dopester wrote: »

Yes. It puts RBS's 3-way £76 billion top-money buy-out of ABN AMRO, at the beginning of another historic credit-crunch (they've never studied past ones?) in to perspective. Fully bullish about it even after NRK had hit big trouble.

Now what do we have:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/jeremy-warner/jeremy-warners-outlook-lloydshalifax-shows-policymakers-are-starting-to-get-it-right-over-crisis-935548.html

Round at Gogarburn, Royal Bank of Scotland's Edinburgh headquarters, Sir Fred Goodwin can hardly contain his anger, which will be directed in part at himself. Lloyds is buying itself market dominance in the UK for little more than Sir Fred paid a year ago for the crud which was his share of ABN Amro.

I'm not happy about it because RBS had the chance to be a real predator. Its like someone here bigging up how they've bought a home as 15% discount and then find it drops another 60%.

dopester

Can someone let me know if you see any Halifax television adverts or not during the next couple of weeks?

Thanks.

I don't watch much telly, and was wondering if the Halifax adverts have been pulled or are still being broadcast.

dopester

Plasticman wrote: »

Probably becuase the spivs were busy running HBOS.

What do you expect?

He might be Oxford and Harvard educated, have worked for Blue Circle (cement) and headed the George range/department for Asda, but when Halifax sought him out:

When Andy Hornby was headhunted to become head of retail at the Halifax in 1999 he declared: "I don't pretend to know about pricing banking products."

And he apparently mocked Lloyds' approach.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/09/18/cnhornby218.xml

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23557493-details/How+the+tortoise+trounced+the+hare:+A+modern+fable+of+two+chief+executives/text/article.do

I can understand some Lloyds shareholder negative reaction to the deal. They could probably get it cheaper. Why are they paying the premium over shareprice? And would feel bad for any Lloyds staff up for any axe. Really it should be HBOS staff first for the chopping block, after the wholesale funding mess the bank got itself in to.

marvin

Just to be clear the takeover pice is actually 0.83 Lloyds shares to 1 HBOS one. This means that until the shares are actually exchanged the real price is not yet set. They are not paying any cash sum for the shares so there is no cash price for them.

Also Lloyds are going to pay their dividend in shares so as to preserve cash, you think they might need it?

As a HBOS share holder I would vote against this deal, as a Lloyds one would vote for, getting a lot of good business quite cheap its easy for a new owner to get shot of the bad business as the new owners of Northern Rock have demonstrated.

A very cheap deal and possibly a prize given to Lloyds as they were unlucky in not getting Northern Rock a move that probably the treasury now regret they did not back at the time.

adrian2000

If this deal is set to go ahead like it is, does it really matter what the HBOS share price is now? If the takeover pice is actually 0.83 Lloyds shares to 1 HBOS one, if the Llloyds TSB share price more important?

For example if the share price of Lloyds TSB share price went to say £5.00 and the above share ratio is used, then each HBOS share holder would get £4.15? Or did they fix the price on the day when the announced the takeover?

Adrian

dopester

I didn't fully finish reading the Independent article before wanting to rant at RBS.

This is why Lloyds TSB paid a big premium over HBOS current lowly share price of the time - but it still is a knock out bargain price, when measured against what RBS spunked on ABN AMRO - which I was very against at the time.

As for the price Lloyds TSB is paying, Sir Victor is right to attribute a reasonable value to HBOS, if only for the reason that if he had attempted to buy it for nothing, it would have accentuated the sense of crisis around HBOS's affairs and further undermined confidence in the British banking system.

Still... the temptation must be there to get it as cheaply as possible, given that Lloyds now needs to work hard in sorting through, sorting out, and integrating HBOS.