Is the Time to Invest in Banks approaching?

sh856531

Surely to God all the nasties are out of the woodwork now?

I swear to god - I will give fiftey pence Sterling to whoever figures that out first

:-)

gozomark

DocProc wrote: »

Is the market seriously expecting full nationalisation of HBOS?

the market isn't expecting it as a definite, or the share price would be zero (or very close to it), however, its being seen as a significant risk

tradetime

sh856531 wrote: »

The government didn't force Lloyds to buy HBOS - the dudes at the top did it of their own free will because they thought all their christmases had come at once. Sucks to be them right now.

As long as HBOS does't have more !!!!!! burried under the bed and lloyds are as strong as everyone thought they were originally then hopefully they'll become much stronger in the midterm.

S

That wouldn't strictly be correct according to the testimony of Lloyds chief exec in front of the treasury select committee last week. He stated that the takeover would have required at least another couple of months due diligence, and they would not have required government loans had they not taken it over. So at the very least they were "encouraged" to expedite far more quickly than prudent.

tradetime

Surely to God all the nasties are out of the woodwork now?

Is all the bad news in the price yet?

Hardly, so far we have witnessed the impact of the retail property market unwinding, which is still ongoing and has not yet near peeked.We have still to feel the full force of the corporate property market unwinding.

sh856531

So at the very least they were "encouraged" to expedite far more quickly than prudent.

No doubt - but there's a big difference between being encouraged and pressured, and actually being forced to do something.

Lets bear in mind the fact that the heads of these banks didn't get to where they are by being pushovers. There's no way they bought something that they didn't want to buy.

The really interesting thing in my mind is did the CEO of lloyds know that they were going to get humped in the short term but did it anyway because he knew that in the longer term getting hold of HBOS was just to good an offer to miss?

I find it hard to believe that the people at the top didn't consider even the worst types of scenario before comitting to take on something as big as HBOS. I know what you're saying about it being rushed - there's no doubt that it was - but if I were being rushed I would take all the information I had at hand and assume that everything was much much worse that it appeared. I would hope that the powers that be at Lloyds would have done the same thing.

Does anyone know, is there any evidence at the moment that the heads of Lloyds didn't know this was going to happen? I know the market didn't know, but that hardly means that Lloyds didn't. I have a feeling that they probably have a pretty good idea of how bad things are at HBOS - or if they don't they at least have a number of scenarios vs probablities in mind.

Many thanks

Simon

Decadent_Fool

tradetime wrote: »

That wouldn't strictly be correct according to the testimony of Lloyds chief exec in front of the treasury select committee last week. He stated that the takeover would have required at least another couple of months due diligence, and they would not have required government loans had they not taken it over. So at the very least they were "encouraged" to expedite far more quickly than prudent.

...and no monopolies and mergers commission investigation...

Trollfever

Experienced bankers should be aware that the lending portfolio of a bank run by a supermarket salesman would not be of the highest quality.

.

StevieJ

StevieJ wrote: »

JP Morgan boss just lashed out 11.5 million $ on company stock, maybe we are reaching a turning point.

Who needs a bonus

sabretoothtigger

he knew that in the longer term getting hold of HBOS was just to good an offer to miss?

Hbos is twice lloyds size and they knew massive cost savings would be possible while grabbing a once in a generation amount of market share.

They asked for a promise that hbos could continue to get government funding as obviously its debts are far too large to service otherwise

Also the deal was renegoiated to a lower price and only paid for in shares. They have taken on liabilties ultimately backed by government anyway and turned themselves into a future market leader to compete with hsbc even

Short term it looks like they crashed into an iceberg on purpose to make a fortune selling ice cubes but will they ever reach shore

StevieJ

Hey BT hope you had a dabble