Lloyds to stun City on profit

halight

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_and_finance/article6719040.ece

LLOYDS BANKING GROUP could shock the market with its first-half results by announcing that accounting trickery has helped it scrape into the black. Despite enormous bad-debt provisions – estimated at £13 billion – the bank is likely to post a modest headline profit for the first six months of the year

Bloo_Loo

Mark to model....you know it makes cents.

halight

As a Share holder im hope the price goes up a bit.:D

Graham_Devon

Wouldn't surprise me. Wasn't it Citibank who ignored their debts and announced a profit?

Bloo_Loo

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Wouldn't surprise me. Wasn't it Citibank who ignored their debts and announced a profit?

you mean, our trading profits trumps our balance sheet losses, which, thanks to mark to model of our financial assets, are in great shape.

michaels

One analyst said: “There are a lot of big numbers involved here. When big numbers start moving around they can become very significant.”

:rotfl:

Wonder how big a bonus an analyst gets for making such insightful comments?!

nearlynew

See my sig..............

Broken_hearted

Like all the other banks they are making profits by hurting the customers. In recent times we have seen credit limits cut and overdraghts withdrawn to claw money back.

Doozergirl

Broken_hearted wrote: »

Like all the other banks they are making profits by hurting the customers. In recent times we have seen credit limits cut and overdraghts withdrawn to claw money back.

That's called reducing risk. It doesn't increase profit. Profit is made on the interest on lending amongst other things, hence they're out there desperate to lend, but to the people and businesses with the top credit scores.

Article isn't really about that though.

michaels

Agreed - if you are a good risk they will happily be increasing your overdraft and credit card interest rates (whilst cutting savings rates) - the last thing they want would be for you to reduce your borrowings.

Of course part of the reason for any profit turnaround will be because of the 'everything including the kitchen sink' shoved in to their last figures when they could blame HBOS (and by extension the Govt for 'forcing' them to take it over).

It will be very interesting to see just how much operational profit Barclays and HSBC are making at the moment - at some point one of the big banks will stop finding write-offs to hide their gouging behind and the results will be extremely offensive - not that the politicians will dare do anything with the threat of offshoring the banks have basically indicated they hold all the cards....

Doozergirl wrote: »

That's called reducing risk. It doesn't increase profit.

Profit is made on the interest on lending amongst other things, hence they're out there desperate to lend, but to the people and businesses with the top credit scores.

amcluesent

Same as when the .com companies announced "profits" on a EBITDA!

Then again IFRS formulation of accounting practices has been disastrous