Word: hbos
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...others, meanwhile, the prospects may not be so bright. Impairments at Lloyds rose to $22.8 billion in the first half, the company said Wednesday, thanks largely to its acquisition in January of HBOS, the troubled U.K. lender heavily exposed to Britain's declining property market. Still, you can't fault Lloyds' optimism. The bank, in which the government has a 43% stake, predicted "high single-digit income growth" within two years. Analysts expect a steep hike in provisions for bad loans when Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), Britain's largest taxpayer-funded lender, unveils first-half results later this week...
...banking system. We have to build our banking system for the future around stronger principles of accountability and transparency and integrity and sound practices. Americans are shocked by what they see happening on Wall Street. People in Britain look at what happened with RBS [Royal Bank of Scotland] or HBOS and are angered by what they would call irresponsible risk-taking and excessively irresponsible behavior. But what people want more than anything else is that these banks and institutions work to the principles and values that they believe are important. (See 25 people to blame for the financial crisis...
...Following the collapse in September of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers, RBS's depleted capital reserves - a consequence of that ABN deal - meant "the spotlight fell on us, and the share price dropped 60% in two days," Goodwin said. Added McKillop: "We are sorry we bought ABN Amro." At HBOS, said Hornby, who stepped down as its CEO in 2008 after only two years in the job, "years of reliance on wholesale funding left us in a vulnerable position." No kidding. When the meltdown in those markets occurred, HBOS was history. "The fundamental mistake that HBOS made was," said Stevenson...
...Still, for all the needling - bankers were submitted to three hours of lawmakers' questions - taxpayers got little in the way of detail about how or why the banks blew it. Stevenson insisted the HBOS board "was all over" risk management and "stress-testing." It was external factors, he said, that ultimately did it for the bank. Goodwin claimed that at "no point did anyone get the scale or the speed of [the slowdown], and that was what was so damaging about this...
...looked at. Hornby reckoned that bonuses "do not reward the right kind of behavior" and suggested they be tied more closely to long-term performance. The 42-year-old, who also went without a bonus in 2008, confessed to losing "considerably more money than I have been paid" at HBOS thanks to his earlier bonuses being awarded in shares. Not that he's asking us to say sorry...