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Rising unemployment may prompt new capital raisings

The worsening economic slowdown is increasing fears that Britain’s banks will have to raise still more capital next year in a market starved of investors.

Investment bankers are preparing for a second round of capital raising by UK lenders on top of the £65bn already declared. Having rebuilt their balance sheets after toxic debt writedowns, the banks face an increasingly dire economic outlook that threatens to take ordinary loan impairments from individuals and businesses to levels not seen since the early 1990s.

Under those worst-case conditions, impairment charges at the domestic banks - Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland and the combined Lloyds Banking Group - could hit £60bn next year, according to Credit Suisse analysts.

“There could be a second credit crunch for banks, with a whole new round of writedowns late in 2009 as the economy filters back to banks,” a senior investment banker said. “They have so far only provisioned for the credit crunch - so they will need to undertake a whole new round of capital raising.”

A trading update earlier this year from HBOS, which will be bought by Lloyds next month, made grim reading for the sector. Impairments from commercial and residential property shot up, and the bank warned of more bad news to come as unemployment, the biggest driver of bad debts, continues to rise.

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Tags: Banks, Barclays, Credit Crisis, Credit Crunch, Economy, Lloyds TSB, RBS, U.K.

HBOS sent another wave of panic through the banking industry today after revealing that its bad debts will top £8bn this year, wiping out more than half the £15.5bn of emergency capital raised by the lender so far.

Shares across the sector tumbled, with HBOS crashing 20pc and Lloyds TSB 17pc as HBOS investors gathered in Birmingham and voted on its merger with Lloyds TSB. Preliminary indications show they voted overwhelmingly in favour.

Royal Bank of Scotland was off 17pc and Barclays 13pc by early afternoon, while analysts at Dresdner Kleinwort said “more capital increases [are] virtually inevitable” on top of the £50bn being injected into Britain’s eight largest banks.

HBOS revealed that bad debts on mortgages, credit cards and corporate lending - plus writedowns on “toxic” debts - had reached £8bn in the first 11 months of the year. The figure is a £3.2bn increase since September alone.

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Tags: Banks, Barclays, Debt, Economy, Financial Crisis, HBoS, Lloyds TSB, mortgage crisis, Mortgages, RBS, U.K.

Alistair Darling summoned the chief executives of Britain’s biggest banks to Downing Street today to demand that they immediately pass on the Bank of England’s interest rate cut to their customers.

Treasury sources confirmed to The Times that the Chancellor told the heads of all Britain’s big high street lenders - including HSBC, Barclays, Lloyds TSB, HBOS Nationwide and Abbey - to implement rate cuts immediately.

Yesterday, the Bank of England slashed interest rates by 1.5 per cent to 3 per cent, the lowest level in 54 years, and today, the shock reduction helped to ease the strain in nervous money markets.

Libor, which is the rate at which banks lend to each other and is key for pricing mortgages, fell by more than one per cent from 5.561 per cent to 4.496 per cent.

However, the figure remains almost 1.5 per cent higher than the official interest rate.

The spread between the Bank of England’s borrowing cost and the rate that banks charge to borrow money over a three-month period - a key measure in the wholesale money market - is the widest since October 22. The day before, Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, publicly acknowledged for the first time that a recession in the UK is now likely.

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Tags: Alistair Darling, Bank of England, Banks, Barclays, Economy, Government, HBoS, HSBC, Lloyds TSB, mortgage crisis, Mortgages, Politics, Rate Cut, RBS, Taxpayers, U.K.

Government set to become biggest shareholder in top banks as Japanese weigh bid for Morgan Stanley

THE government will launch the biggest rescue of Britain’s high-street banks tomorrow when the UK’s four biggest institutions ask for a £35 billion financial lifeline.

The unprecedented move will make the government the biggest shareholder in at least two banks.

Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), which has seen its market value fall to below £12 billion, is to ask ministers to underwrite a £15 billion cash call.

Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS), Britain’s biggest provider of mortgages, is seeking up to £10 billion.

Lloyds TSB, which is in the process of acquiring HBOS in a rescue merger, wants £7 billion, while Barclays needs £3 billion.

The scale of the fundraising could lead to trading at the London stock market being suspended. This would give time for the market to digest the impact of the moves.

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Tags: AIG, Bank of England, Barclays, Citigroup, Credit Crisis, Credit Crunch, Deutsche Bank, Economy, G7, Goldman Sachs, Government, HBoS, HSBC, JPMorgan, Lehman Brothers, Lloyds TSB, Morgan Stanley, mortgage crisis, Mortgages, Politics, RBS, Stock Market, U.K.

Shares in Britain’s banks plunged again amid panicky trading following emergency talks with the government over a possible injection of billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money into the banking sector.

Royal Bank of Scotland nosedived by almost 40% to 90p in morning trading - its lowest point since the recession of the early 1990s. Barclays, Lloyds TSB and HBOS were also hit, as the lack of a coordinated rescue plan for the banking sector alarmed the City.

By 3pm RBS shares were 32.5% lower at 112p, giving it a market capitalisation of £15.98bn - down from over £75bn a year ago.

HBOS was 23% lower at 124p and Lloyds TSB had lost 13% to 225p. Barclays had recovered most of its early losses following Varley’s comments this morning.

Last night Britain’s bank bosses met with chancellor Alistair Darling, to discuss a possible £50bn injection of equity. They are due to meet again at the Treasury this afternoon.

The talks centre on the idea of a part-nationalisation of the banking system through the injection of capital into the banks via preference shares, which take precedence over ordinary shares during a liquidation, but do not give the holders any voting rights.

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Tags: Alistair Darling, Bank of England, Banks, Barclays, Economy, Government, HBoS, Lloyds TSB, Politics, RBS, Stock Market, Taxpayers, Treasury, U.K.

Speculators made a £190million profit from HBoS shares after details of takeover talks with Lloyds TSB were announced on the BBC

City watchdogs are expected to investigate how speculators made a £190million profit from HBOS shares in a frenzied two minutes of trading immediately before news of the bank’s rescue was made public.

Details of the takeover talks between the bank and Lloyds TSB were controversially announced by the BBC’s business editor Robert Peston on Wednesday morning.

Before his 9am broadcast, HBOS shares had dipped to a low of 88p. But his scoop sent the price rocketing to 215p in the space of an hour, giving the mystery buyers huge instant profits.

In just two deals between 8.57pm and 8.58pm, buyers snapped up more than 20million HBOS shares at 96p each, netting millions of pounds in profit.

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Tags: Economy, HBoS, Insider Trading, Lloyds TSB, Stock Market, U.K.

The Bank of England has imposed a permanent news blackout on its £50bn-plus plan to ease the credit crunch.

Requests under the Freedom of Information Act are to be denied. Details will be kept secret even after 30 years - the period after which all but the most sensitive state documents are released.

Any Bank of England employee leaking the names of institutions involved will face court action for breach of contract.

Even a figure for the overall amount advanced will not be published until October. Meanwhile the Bank is expected to issue at least £50bn of Treasury bills to banks in exchange for their mortgages - entirely in secret. Continue reading »

Tags: Bailout, Bank of England, Barclays, Financial Crisis, Freedom of Information Act, HBoS, Lloyds TSB, Mortgages