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Welcome to Peston’s Picks - the home of my reports and analysis of the issues in business that matter to us all
8 hours ago
The biggest contributor to Lloyds' £3.5bn loss was the £3.2bn cost of compensating customers missold PPI credit insurance. So in a sense it is old news.
But even without that charge Lloyds would have fallen back into losses of a few hundred million pounds in 2011, compared with £281m of profit in 2010.
10:33 UK time, Thursday, 23 February 2012
It matters to all of us that RBS is returned to health, because we as taxpayers invested more than £45bn in the bank to prevent it going bust, and at the current RBS share price we are currently sitting on a loss of £20bn on that investment.
So if we want all the schools, hospitals, roads and railway tracks that £45bn can buy, we've got to hope that RBS starts making substantial, sustainable profits again - so that taxpayers' 82% stake in the bank can be privatised at something more than 51p per share we paid for it.
07:30 UK time, Tuesday, 21 February 2012
I am on my way to Rome to talk to a taxi driver about the eurozone crisis.
No, not because any rational person would have lost faith in the ability of the European Union's leadership to rebuild confidence in the strained currency union - but to see the impact on livelihoods of attempts by the Italian government to woo investors by modernising the economy, which includes abolishing restrictive practices (including the system for licensing taxis).
08:16 UK time, Monday, 20 February 2012
One of the important reforms insisted on by regulators after the 2008 banking crisis was that bankers should have to give back some of their bonuses, if their bank performed worse than expected.
This is happening for the first time at a British bank - at Lloyds - because of the huge mess it made of mis-selling PPI credit insurance to customers.
12:37 UK time, Friday, 10 February 2012
Barclays' profit before tax of £5.9bn, or £5.6bn on the adjusted measure it prefers, may seem huge.
But it was 3% lower than in 2010. And perhaps more importantly it is less than half what Barclays' executives, led by the chief executive Bob Diamond, think the bank ought to be making - as measured by its return on equity capital.
13:31 UK time, Thursday, 9 February 2012
Stephen Hester's interview on Today made it absolutely clear that the chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland - bruised and battered by political and media attacks on his bonus - came pretty close to resigning.
"I am not a robot" was his resonant description of how he felt on seeing himself turned into a symbol of the alleged excesses of the banking industry. There have been "deeply depressing moments", he said, but "in the end I came to the conclusion it would be indulgent for me to resign".
15:11 UK time, Wednesday, 8 February 2012
Everything about the merger of Glencore and Xstrata is big.
The market value of the combined mining and commodities group would be $90bn or almost £60bn.Their combined revenues for 2011 would have been $209bn (£132bn) and their profits before interest, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda, a proxy for cash generated) would have been over £10bn ($16.2bn).
16:52 UK time, Monday, 6 February 2012
Those who run our biggest multinational companies tell me they've been badly let down by government.
So the prime minister may be feeling a bit bruised a little later today - when he chairs a meeting of his Business Advisory Group - if they say to him directly the kind of things they've been saying to me about him and his colleagues (I assume they'll show deference for his office and tone it down).
10:41 UK time, Friday, 3 February 2012
Philip Hampton, chairman of RBS, used the "can't-live-with-them, can't-live-without-them" defence of bankers and their big pay today.
As I have mentioned before, he is firmly of the view that investment bankers and banking executives are paid too much - not because he is opposed to big pay, but because bankers' pay has become disconnected from rewards for shareholders.
13:18 UK time, Thursday, 2 February 2012
Some would argue there are two great bubbles in the world right now, in internet shares and commodities, but goodness how they manifest themselves differently on the stock market.
Today's manifestations of these phenomena are the merger talks between the mining and commodities trading groups Xstrata and Glencore, plus the announcement that Facebook will be coming to the stock market.
12:45 UK time, Wednesday, 1 February 2012
There is a lot of chatter around the place that somehow the government is becoming anti-business with the way it welcomed the de-knighting of Fred Goodwin and the pressure it put on RBS's board to slash Stephen Hester's bonus.
That doesn't feel quite right - not least because business is not some homogeneous collection of individuals and institutions, all of which have a common outlook and interest.
19:04 UK time, Tuesday, 31 January 2012
I keep being asked whether business leaders and bankers with knighthoods, CBEs and the rest should be living in terror that they too may be stripped of their honours following the decision of Her Majesty to de-sir Fred Goodwin, on the advice of Whitehall.
I don't really think so, because Fred Goodwin was in a class of his own, at least for the UK, in terms of taking business risks that damaged the wealth of taxpayers and undermined prospects for the British economy.
23:56 UK time, Sunday, 29 January 2012
It was Labour's decision to put Stephen Hester's bonus to a Commons vote that gave the RBS chief executive no option but to say he would not be taking £963,000 in shares.
As an RBS director put it to me, it would have been a great mistake for the semi-nationalised bank to fight parliament to preserve rewards for its chief executive seen by many as excessive.
11:50 UK time, Saturday, 28 January 2012
Earlier this month I mentioned that Royal Bank of Scotland's chairman Sir Philip Hampton was entitled to receive 5.17m shares in the bank later this year.
These would have been worth £1.4m at the current RBS share price.
20:40 UK time, Thursday, 26 January 2012
The Treasury is convinced that the board of Royal Bank of Scotland has taken its views into account, in paying a reduced bonus to Stephen Hester, chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland.
But it is pretty difficult right now to judge whether that is true. Here is why.
13:01 UK time, Thursday, 26 January 2012
David Cameron and entourage have rolled into Davos to sell the investment potential of Olympic-year Britain to the business leaders, investors and bankers who throng the World Economic Forum's annual meeting.
But in his plenary address, he also delivered something of a lecture to the eurozone on what it needs to do insure the long-term survival and prosperity of the creaking currency union.
10:14 UK time, Thursday, 26 January 2012
On the official second day of the World Economic Forum here in Davos, I have just interviewed Baudouin Prot, the chairman of BNP Paribas, the huge French bank which is seen as one of Europe's stronger banks.
He had two or three pretty interesting claims to make - though I should say at the outset that not everyone will agree with him.
08:39 UK time, Wednesday, 25 January 2012
The UK is certainly not alone in debating whether the widening gap between the super-haves and the have-littles is an altogether good thing.
It is one of the big talking points here at the World Economic Forum, for an obvious reason.
19:50 UK time, Tuesday, 24 January 2012
Government pressure is building on Royal Bank of Scotland's board to announce that chief executive Stephen Hester is to receive a significantly reduced bonus.
I am hearing that the Treasury will inform the company that it believes Mr Hester should receive less than half the bonus of just over £2m that he was awarded last year. So that would be a bonus of less than £1m.
16:12 UK time, Tuesday, 24 January 2012
My train is chugging up the snow-carpeted mountain to the Alpine resort of Davos, once a refuge for consumptives and now, at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting, home-from-home for the world's more conspicuous consumers (bankers, hedge fund managers, private-equity stars, inter alia).
It is therefore inevitable that a business editor's thoughts turn again to the widening gap between top people's remuneration and the rewards more widely available.
Robert has won numerous awards for his journalism, including Journalist of the Year, Specialist Journalist of the Year and Scoop of the Year (twice) from the Royal Television Society, Performer of the Year from the Broadcasting Press Guild, and Broadcaster of the Year and Journalist of the Year from the Wincott Foundation.
Prior to joining the BBC, he was political editor and financial editor of the Financial Times, City Editor of the Sunday Telegraph and a columnist for the New Statesman and Sunday Times.
He broadcast and published a series of influential reports about the causes and consequences of the global financial crisis.
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