ON BBC news, Lloyds Banking Group's in-house PR Shane O'Riordain says: “Lloyds is a strong, well-capitalised bank.”

This has a familiar ring. On 16 September last year, O'Riordain, then at HBOS, said: “HBOS notes the current volatility in bank share prices following developments in the United States. HBOS has a strong capital base and continues to fund very satisfactorily.”

The same day, Shane was quoted on Bloomberg saying that HBOS continues to gain “very satisfactory'' access to money market funding, has taken a cautious outlook to the securitisation market and has taken the appropriate action. That is why our objective is to grow deposits faster than assets.'' Two days later, HBOS announced it was merging with Lloyds.

* MEANWHILE, Royal Bank of Scotland also keeps on spinning. The state-owned bank is responding keenly to demands from the Government to keep lending. The press officers in Edinburgh are joyfully reporting that 85% of the deals going through the credit committees get sanctioned. However, a whistle blower tells City Spy that they have omitted another statistic:
15 per cent of those deals approved require security and the conditions that are imposed are so onerous that it's impossible — or just plain stupid — for a business to accept the loan. RBS even has a name for this. They call it a “constructive decline”. Seriously.

Now Portillo is sweet on Dave

EX-TORY MP and minister Michael Portillo used to be a stern critic of his party leader David Cameron. But he was all sweetness and light when he was invited onto the Today Programme to discuss the fallout from the ratifcation of the Lisbon Treaty and Cameron's awkward position — the Tory leader appears to be reneging on a “cast-iron” pledge two years ago that he would hold a referendum on the issue.

Is Portillo's new more emollient stance connected with his new job as a corporate PR man? While Today didn't make mention of it, Portillo has just started work at Portland PR. And prospective clients would surely like a PR firm which is cosy with the likely incoming Tory Government...

* FURTHER evidence of Portillo cosying up to the Cameroons. Portland, run by ex-Blairite spinner Tim Allan, has just produced a glossy, 44-page pamphlet for clients, entitled portentously “Cameron's Britain”, with a gushing introduction by Portillo. The former MP hails Dave for “achieving a political turnaround with few precedents” and “having moved his party to the centre, Cameron now has the opportunity to lead a radical Tory government”. Allan also pens a piece for the pamphlet and, despite having been Alastair Campbell's deputy under Tony Blair, he still manages to heap praise on Dave too, recalling how he knew Cameron in the days he was a special adviser to Home Secretary Michael Howard. “He [Cameron] used to tell me stories of the battles he had with the Civil Service when helping to push through the tougher approach to criminal justice policy that Howard was keen to champion. He knows how to get policy through the Whitehall machinery.” It's the way you tell em, Tim.

Here today, gone tomorrow

A gushing newspaper piece tells how Frits Seegers' “favourite piece of equipment is an electronic screen that gives him an instant view of every Barclays branch in the world. It gives the hard-driving retail and commercial bank chief an overview of customer behaviour and profitability, as he goes on a shopping spree from emerging markets and continental Europe.”
That was last week. This week, Barclays announced Seegers' departure in a management shake-up.

* FORMER Nomura bankers Anna Francis, and Maureen Murphy are making headlines for suing their Japanese employer for £1.5 million each, alleging it was racist and sexist. Among the allegations is that male employees referred to their breasts as “honkers”. The headline in the Sun was suitably blunt: “Girls sue bank after honkers' breast jibe.” Just for the record, those “girls” are aged 37 and 30 respectively.

* A poll of 2000 Britons shows that only 4% would trust a supermarket more than a bank to look after their finances. And, while a quarter would take out a credit card with a supermarket brand, only 5% would take out a mortgage. Tesco, are you listening?

* FINANCIAL Times columnist Lucy Kellaway must be sailing close to the wind with her agony aunt column. She's inviting readers' thoughts on a human-resources director whose wife works at the same company as him and has been conducting an illicit affair with the chief executive. The HR director suggests the unhappy saga has been “intolerable to my pride” and “I am the only person to have behaved professionally throughout”. Any resemblance to what has just happened at Aviva with chief executive Andrew Moss is entirely coincidental. Of course.

Mittal faces Escada battle

Everything her father-in-law touches seems to turn to gold. But it may be that in the bidding war for Katie Holmes and Hilary Swank's favourite designer, Escada, all will not go so well for Megha Mittal. Megha, who married Lakshmi's son Aditya (heir to the top job at ArcelorMittal) is bidding for the fashion house which is currently in bankruptcy after seeing its revenues drop 15% last year. Trouble is, several rival bidders are also set to launch punchy offers, including the Beirut-based M1 Group, which paid a big $210 million for Nordstrom's Faconnable group in 2007.

Lakshmi will probably be best remembered for the dogged determination which eventually led to victory in his hard-fought $38 billion takeover of Arcelor in 2006. Does his daughter-in-law have the same appetite?