On Her Majesty's Banking Service?

[edschweppe]

Apparently, the place where I've been doing my banking for years will soon be owned mostly by Her Majesty's Government. Way back when I first got out of the Navy, I opened an account with the Cooperative Bank of Concord. Umpteen mergers and buyouts later, that same account is part of Citizen's Bank, which is in turn owned by Royal Bank of Scotland. And, according to the BBC, the big British bank bailout includes £20 billion for 60% of RBS:

The government is to pump billions of pounds of taxpayers money into three UK banks in one of the UK's biggest nationalisations.

Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), Lloyds TSB and HBOS will have a total of £37bn injected into them.

In return for the investment, the government will get a say in how the banks are run, including controls over the bonuses paid to management.

BBC business editor Robert Peston said the banks faced "absolute humiliation".

[ ... ]

Under the plan RBS is to raise £20bn with a further £17bn to be put into HBOS and Lloyds TSB. Barclays intends to raise £6.5bn without government help.

Taxpayers will own about 60% of RBS and 40% of the merged Lloyds TSB and HBOS and executives at the three firms will see cash bonuses limited or forbidden.

I wonder if Gordon Brown realizes that he just bought the bank closest to the Old North Bridge. Thomas Gage's Revenge, anyone?

Comments

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Meanwhile, the US Treasury has agreed to lend unlimited amounts of dollars to European banks in exchange for their currencies at overnight discount rates.

[edschweppe.livejournal.com]

Oh. My.

I've got to admit that I'm very happy not to be working in financial services nowadays.

(BTW, did you see the "Garden Gnomes for Obama" button (http://www.democraticstuff.com/Garden-Gnomes-for-Obama-Photo-Button-p/bt24401.htm)?)

[wcg.livejournal.com]

No, I hadn't seen that one until just now. That's great.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Well, it's not as if that's real _money_, after all. It's just computer talk.

[carl-schweppe.livejournal.com]

Huh - I wonder... do you think that British children are taught much about the Old North Bridge? I never thought about it, but I'd guess it's not as important to the british as, say, the battle of britain or waterloo or trafalgar or even agincourt. Though I don't know.