Home or Away?
I’ve just been on holiday – 10 days in the Loire Valley and Paris with friends & family – perfect. Today is my first day back and I was feeling pretty chilled at 9 o’clock this morning until the morning update from Money Marketing dropped into my inbox.
HSBC have reported a 121% profit hike apparently. $11.1 bn in the first half of 2010 compared to $5 bn in the first half of 2009. Michael Geoghegan, HSBC’s group chief executive said much of the strength of the results came from improving personal financial services business in Asia, which he says will be at the “forefront” of the bank’s plans going forward. He said: “Asia will spend $150bn more on retail products this year. The West will spend $100bn less. So Asia does have to be the powerhouse. And we’re getting a good share of that business. And I think there’s good things to come yet.”
Now, we all have to make a profit to survive in business. That’s the whole point, really. But it seems to me that once again, the big institutions – all of whom played their not insignificant role in the recession we’re still struggling with – are chasing the big profits without a thought for what’s happening on their own doorstep. Asia is predicted to spend $100 bn more on retail products than the rest this year, so that makes it fine to concentrate on getting their slice of that money whilst still making it virtually impossible for small UK businesses to borrow money does it? Forgive me if I don’t agree.
George Osborne has warned high street banks that they need to increase lending to small businesses – in fact he has told them that it is their obligation to lift lending and that the Government will not tolerate banks piling the pressure onto small businesses. It’s not often that I agree with anything else that a Tory politician says but I’m with him on this one!
Quite how they are going to achieve this remains to be seen, however. Banks are not regulated in the same way as us mere mortals in financial services. If they were they wouldn’t have been bailed out as they were over the past couple of years, they would have been left to fend for themselves and told, quite rightly, that they shouldn’t have been so greedy in the first place.
It seems they have learned nothing at all from the past 3 years. A new, shiny toy has been dangled in front of them so they’re off to play with that. Threatening them with the naughty step is unlikely to make any difference whatsoever.
What do you think?
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4 Responses to Home or Away?
All that jazz – All in A Day
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If taking their toys and the naughty step won't work, I suggest we make them pay back their handouts and restrict them on how they can do business in the UK. How I am not sure, but they would soon cough over the money or give up their market share to the banks that are lending.
What they seem to be forgetting (or willfully ignoring) and hoping, with heads in the sand that we will, too is that:
We have choice, to name but a few:
Metro Bank was a few days ago the first new bank to open its terrestrial doors in the UK for over 100 years
Santander is poised to take over 318 RBS branches this week
Virgin Money will no doubt make its mark in its own style
And Tesco is wading into the fray
and, as demonstrated here on a recent post, we also have a voice – it'll be interesting to see how we wield both
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Twitter: Linda_Mattacks
Absolutely – the goverment are simply too scared of the banks to make any significant changes.
Mind you, I'm not a fan of Tesco either!