MSE News: Big five banks should sell branches, says Ed Miliband

Former_MSE_Helen

"Labour leader Ed Miliband will set out a blueprint for fundamental reform of the banking system today..."

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Big five banks should sell branches, says Ed Miliband

callum9999

Perhaps Tesco and ASDA should be forced to sell off their branches to "increase competition" as well?

And as he is all for increasing jobs at any cost, shouldn't he be pushing for any new banks to just open their own new branches? Then we'd have actual competition in an area (instead of one bank now having no presence, both banks will have a presence), more jobs and less empty shops on the high street.

patanne

Just waiting for the threads that start - they sold my branch to (insert a new name of you choice) and I haven't had access to my money for (start with 1 and work up) weeks.

oldvicar

As the price of state support the RBS/NatWest group has already been forced by Europe to sell many of its branches to create more competition.

The sale goes through later this year to ... Santander, ironiclly another of the 'big five' we're now supposed to hate for being too big.

mmillie

I don't get it - are they talking about being forced to sell the actual buildings, or are they talking about selling all of the customer accounts from that branch. I can't see how either of those would be acceptable to the public. If I bank with Lloyds, and the government forces them to sell my local branch to Tesco for example, I no longer have a local branch. That sucks for me. If they force me to transfer my bank account to Tesco, that sucks even more - I have made a conscious decision about who to bank with based on a number of factors, and it may be detrimental to me to change to a different bank.

This might be good for the industry overall (and I remain to be convinced of that), but I can't see how it is good for the actual consumers of those branches.

Lokolo

Where was his voice for the past year when NBNK have been trying to create a new bank from the Lloyds branch sale??

patanne

I'm not sure what selling off branches to new banks would achieve. Unless they were run by people who had never been involved in banking, which is unlikely as whoever manages them, as opposed to owning them, will still be part of the banking institutions & their "interesting" way of thinking. Although I think striking them off when appropriate and the forming of a specialist banking unit within the fraud squad a good idea.

Roehyde

There are plenty of empty shops in High Streets across the UK, and plenty of intelligent, educated and willing to work unemployed people too.
Given the above, why would a new bank need to buy existing branches from another bank? Why not open new branches?

pinkdalek

How about new banks/competitor banks opening new "stores" rather than replacing an existing branch? Take the RBS/Sanatander example, how does this increase competition when one bank (RBS) is being replaced by a Santander branch, which already happens to have a branch in the same town? With some of the Lloyds branches are these just not being replaced so in effect there is no extra competition just a replacement bank?

Most towns now are full of charity shops and the high street is dying a death. A bank isn't competitive just by the fact it has a branch, what the dopey labour politician doesn't realise is that banking now is very much online/telephone as well as branch.

If he wants to make banks more competitive and increase jobs, then why not have it so the UK banks have to have their call centres in the UK, their admin offices etc.

This is from the party whose government closed 100s of post offices and also allowed Lloyds to take over HBOS despite it going against all the rules of the monopolies commission.

amiehall

Totally ridiculous suggestions.... Forget competition, what about consumer choice!? In the past year, I've been almost sold off to Santander, I've also had to travel and open accounts at Lloyds away from my most local branch to avoid a branch sale.

If I choose to bank somewhere, that's where I've chosen to bank. I don't expect to be sold off to increase competition!

antrobus

"The revelations of the last two weeks has shown precisely what has gone wrong with our economy in the last decades" says Ed M.

Quite Ed. More specifically the revelations of the last two weeks has shown precisely what went wrong with our economy during the period when you were a member of the government that was in charge.