Chancellor George Osborne receivex a rare dose of good news as the company which runs the so-called "bad bank" parts of Bradford & Bingley and Northern Rock says it paid back £1 billion of taxpayers' money in the last six months... more
The men who run the taxpayers' stakes in Britain's bank face a grilling from MPs next week as the row over bonuses and a lack of lending continues to fuel public anger... more
City Editor's Comment: We still don’t know how Bradford & Bingley came to be nationalised. The Government's reaction has been at best tardy - at worst it suggests an attempt to hide a wider scandal... more
Hopes are growing in the City that tomorrow’s White Paper on financial regulation will back away from creating onerous legislation for banks until after the General Election, which is expected next year ... more
Banking: Two of Britain's biggest building societies have reported sharp falls in their profits as their bad debts soared and they picked up their part of the tab for the failure of Bradford & Bingley... more
A couple of weeks ago two senior figures in the private-equity industry - two of the most red-blooded capitalists I know - asked what I thought of a state-owned bank. ... more
One of the more bizarre suggestions I have heard this week was that we are not in a systemic crisis. It used to be only at weekends that banks collapsed, were nationalised or forced into mergers but now it is almost a daily occurrence... more
Shares of failed buy-to-let lender Bradford & Bingley were suspended at 20p before the start of trading on the stock market, to allow for the transfer of ownership into public hands... more
Two banks nationalised, one bust, others taken over, thousands of jobs likely to be lost, the FTSE 100 through the floor, the effects likely to spill over into the rest of the economy — and still I'm not sure if we really get it... more
Banking: The chances that Bradford & Bingley will be the next bank to seek a rescue seemed to grow after the shares took yet another hit, falling to an all-time low... more
Shareholders were licking their lips over a raft of possible takeover action as actual and rumoured deals totalling almost £12 billion hit dealers' screens... more
Britain's biggest High Street banks and pension funds are set to lose tens of millions of pounds from bailing out the stricken buy-to-let mortgage lender Bradford & Bingley... more
Moody's Investors Service has downgraded the long-term bank deposit rating and the senior debt rating of Bradford & Bingley plc (Bradford & Bingley) to Baa1 from A3... more
While most attention in the City is focused on HBOS and whether its £4 billion rights issue will be left with the underwriters, it is in fact the much smaller Bradford & Bingley issue that should be the main centre of concern... more
Two of Britain's largest companies launched emergency rights issues to bolster their balance sheets as the economic slowdown and continuing credit crunch forced them to seek extra cash... more
Afternoon:
8°c
