After a day of speculation, it's been confirmed that Lloyds TSB is buying HBOS (which owns Halifax and Bank of Scotland) in a deal worth £12.2bn. In ordinary times, the competition watchdogs would not allow the merger to go ahead, as the enlarged group would capture too big a proportion of the UK mortgage and savings market. But these aren't ordinary times. There's plenty of concern north of the border to ensure that jobs remain in Scotland - although it doesn't take too much to realise that the deal will end up leading to many job losses. Let's hope that some of the recent turmoil in financial markets will start to disappear, and that consumers continue to get a good choice of services, products and rates, and therefore don't get a bad result out of the deal.
Thursday, 18 September 2008
Banking on a major deal
After a day of speculation, it's been confirmed that Lloyds TSB is buying HBOS (which owns Halifax and Bank of Scotland) in a deal worth £12.2bn. In ordinary times, the competition watchdogs would not allow the merger to go ahead, as the enlarged group would capture too big a proportion of the UK mortgage and savings market. But these aren't ordinary times. There's plenty of concern north of the border to ensure that jobs remain in Scotland - although it doesn't take too much to realise that the deal will end up leading to many job losses. Let's hope that some of the recent turmoil in financial markets will start to disappear, and that consumers continue to get a good choice of services, products and rates, and therefore don't get a bad result out of the deal.
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