HBOS shares

~Chameleon~

Glad I never got around to buying any back in October then :T

poppy10_2

LOL, HBOS still manages one last death fart, a month after being absorbed into Lloyds Banking Group.

A massive £10 billion writedown announced today after Lloyds had a rummage through their balance sheet and found all sorts of nasties.

Lloyds Banking Group shares fell up to 40% on the news. :eek:



Peston's take:

The profits warning just released by Lloyds is shocking.

The loss at HBOS - which is a fraction under £11bn - represents a new record loss for a British bank.

Lloyds says that on a statutory basis HBOS - which it bought earlier this year - lost £10bn in 2008 plus a so-called policyholder charge of £0.9bn (so just under £11bn altogether).

Which is enough to turn most bankers white, even those hardened by the battles of the past 18 months.

What generated the colossal loss at HBOS was, to a large extent, eye-watering charges of £7bn on corporate loans that have gone bad - in part reflecting the recession we're in. But Lloyds says that the loss on loans to companies is also the result of Lloyds applying its more conservative accounting standards to HBOS's loan book - which is one serious kick in the tender parts for HBOS's previous executives.

HBOS also suffered the indignity of incurring further big losses on its holdings of assorted dodgy investments.

It is a terrible humiliation for HBOS's already bashed-up previous chief executives, Andy Hornby and Sir James Crosby. And it's pretty embarrassing - to put it mildly - for Lloyds' chief executive, Eric Daniels.

Lloyds didn't have to buy enfeebled HBOS - even though the government encouraged it to do so. This afternoon's horrible fall in Lloyds' share price is investors having serious doubts about whether Lloyds was right to buy HBOS.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/

opinions4u

This is before 2009 brings higher unemployment, more negative equity and more bad debts.

Brands like Birmingham Midshire, TMB and Bank of Scotland will not have the best quality mortgage books to deal with these economics, whereas I would expect Halifax and IF branded lending to be much sounder.