Afternoon:
14°c
There was an audible sigh of relief across the City this morning: at last the authorities seem to have got their act together and quickly and efficiently saved a bank.
It doesn't mean Bradford & Bingley is in the clear. Before everyone gets carried away about what one of those involved eulogised to me as "an all-British rescue of a British bank", there's no guarantee the rights issue will be a success. The underwriters could still be left holding a ton of B&B stock.
The four shareholders who came up trumps are entitled now to call the shots at B&B. To say its management has been woeful is an understatement. There is already a vacancy for chief executive. Another one should open up - and not soon enough - for chairman.
Rod Kent brought in Texas Pacific Group which came, naturally, armed with clauses saying they could get out if the debt was downgraded. Surprise, surprise, it was. Why?
Because the bank was in such a mess. It's no use Kent saying the management was hopeless - he's been chairman since November 2002. He can hardly pretend he didn't know about the cock-ups - nearly six years is a long time to be playing yourself in, Rod.
The "Fantastic Four", as doubtless M&G, L&G, Insight and Standard Life would like to be seen, are faced with issues that go deeper than personnel. They may have provided a lifeboat but what is it they've rescued? In the new order, post Northern Rock, the future of B&B and its fellow second-division mortgage lenders looks decidedly uncertain.
In the midst of the euphoria, it's easy to forget B&B is supposed to be a business and whoever owns it is under an obligation to grow the profits. How that will be achieved is far from clear.
Clive Cowdery thought he had an answer and the four super-heroes agreed with him, which was to wrap up the clutter of bit players stricken by the credit crunch and a tightened supervisory environment, into one beast of a bank. It's got a lot of merit - even if the banking unions scream otherwise. Cowdery is available, of course, but he would struggle to obtain the funding in the light of Moody's reassessment.
Howls of rage have been directed against TPG for pulling out. But honestly, why shouldn't they? Everyone involved, including the FSA, was aware of the break clauses, and as a TPG senior executive said to me yesterday: "We're not the Bank of England, we have a fiduciary duty to our investors." That's a pretty ominous statement to make. B&B has been saved but nobody should be under any illusion: it's far from receiving the all-clear.
