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Trustees, trouble and trade

Douglas Fraser | 13:53 UK time, Thursday, 7 May 2009

On Sunday, The Trustee Savings Bank has its 199th birthday in Scotland. But it will be lucky to reach its 200th birthday before being despatched from the high street by its new owners, Lloyds Banking Group.

That much has been confirmed this morning by Archie Kane, the bank's board member responsible for Scotland and insurance.

We knew the Halifax was to be dropped from the BOS of Bank of Scotland, leaving a much clearer branding for the 314-year-old lady of the Mound. But it's been a bit less clear what was to happen to the 'Lloyds TSB Scotland' branding.

Lloyds stays, of course, as name of the London-based group. But what of TSB or Trustee Savings Bank, founded in Ruthwell near Dumfries by the Rev Henry Duncan in 1810, to help poor parishioners exercise the virtue of thrift? I'm told there's a search on for a way to keep it going.

Twenty-four years ago, when the TSB in Scotland was forced to give up its mutual status, a campaign against that was led by civil servant Jim Ross.

I seem to remember that won him the Scot of the Year award from listeners to Good Morning Scotland. Perhaps blog readers have ideas how best to preserve the name now.

The much bigger picture on Lloyds Banking Group is updated this morning, with news that its corporate impairments are set to rise by 50% this year.

This is partly down to the huge, inherited problems Lloyds TSB took on with HBOS. It's partly down to the state of the economy dragging more companies into trouble.

Here's the news in their own words: "We continue to expect retail impairment levels to rise significantly during 2009, in both the secured and unsecured lending portfolios.

"We expect continuing declines in commercial property prices and reducing levels of corporate cash flows as we anticipate a continuing difficult economic outlook.

"These factors are now leading us to anticipate further corporate defaults during the rest of the year, notably in the commercial real estate portfolios in the UK and Ireland.

"In particular, the real estate exposures in the legacy HBOS portfolios are more sensitive to a downturn in the economic environment. As a result, corporate impairments in 2009 are expected to be more than 50 per cent higher than in 2008".

Life assurance and pensions sales are 22% down, while 500,000 new current accounts have been opened, and the drive to strip at least £1.5 bn out of the cost base over the next three years is, reportedly, on track, with a tenth of that already identified.

Tomorrow, we get a trading update from the Royal Bank of Scotland, expected to include its first quarter figures. But the overall picture in the banking sector is of a whole lot more confidence.

The RBS share-price has risen sharply in recent weeks - so much so that the Government's huge investment in shareholding is on the cusp of showing a paper profit.

And this morning, the Treasury has published its review of Britain's position in the global financial sector, emphasising that it's about a whole lot more going on than the City of London's Square Mile.

Less than a third of the sector's million-plus employees work in London, with clusters around the country, notably in Scottish asset management, but also in Leeds and south west England.

And it seeks to challenge what it calls a myth: that the British economy is unbalanced towards finance.

The report, by a committee chaired by Sir Win Bischoff, argues it has fluctuated in a band between 5 and 8% of output, much less than the 14% or so in manufacturing, similar to the US and the Netherlands and significantly lower than Singapore and Hong Kong.

More on that soon-ish. Sir Win and the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, are heading for Edinburgh soon to discuss their findings with the finance sector in Scotland.

Comments

  • Comment number 1.

    Douglas

    How about a charitable thought, a passbook based Trustee Savings Bank for under 18s available through Post Offices as well as the Banks and supermarkets and a higher than average rate to get youngsters in the way of thrift rather than bingeing on credit cards?

  • Comment number 2.

    Sounds like a great idea handclapping, very important to get the young used to saving rather than splurging. I guess there would need to be safeguards in place to prevent unscrupulous parents using junior's account to get higher interest rates though...maybe cap the higher rate to the first few hundreds (one thousand?) of savings...?

  • Comment number 3.

    The financial services sector cannot possibly be considered to have redeemed itself until it explains how it intends reconnecting with the rest of the economy and using its skills to work with Govt and industry to achieve a properly balanced and high value economy.

  • Comment number 4.

    An entire column based on an interview some Lloyds bigwig did with The Herald newspaper today? How original. This gives a good idea where Douglas Fraser gets his stories from :-)


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