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All Things Must Change
Practice area: General
Justin Urquhart Stewart
Justin Urquhart Stewart is one of the most recognisable and trusted market commentators on television, radio, and in the press. Originally trained as a lawyer, he has observed the retail market industry for 20 years whilst at Barclays Stockbrokers and developed a unique understanding of the market's roles and benefits for the private investor. Justin provides financial advice to clients of Kester Cunningham John Financial Planning LLP.
Can the City of London kindly stop moping around like a depressed basset hound. Just a year after we managed to avoid financial Armageddon, the banking system is of course still not fit for purpose, but none-the-less changes and developments are afoot – which is good news. However:
Bad news - it would be foolhardy to suggest that the banking issues and problems have been resolved – far from it. From last year worrying about having banks that were 'too big to fail', we now have a smaller number of larger banks (in terms of market share) which are still 'too big to fail'. We still have not addressed the regulation and risk controls of the unstable mixture of investment and utility banking, and for many they are still undercapitalised with large write downs ahead of them, and unable to lend sufficiently at the right margin into a credit-strapped economy.
Good news – changes are afoot:
- RBS has already started the process of divesting 318 branches to someone else (offers needed please). LloydsTSB has to do the same for some 600 of their branches and of course Northern Rock has been restructured as a functioning mortgage bank again and is ready for a friendly purchaser.
- There are also new participants waiting in the wings whose plans are as a result of these changes. Tesco and some other supermarkets all have banking aspirations of various levels and given that they already have one or two branches, such an initiative with a high level of internet access would not necessarily be a very complicated structure. Also we cannot ignore the aspirations of Sir Richard Branson's Virgin group who have made it very clear that they are interested in entering the arena in some form or another.
- Then we can have the brand new banking ideas that are forming. Blackstone, the private equity firm has applied to the FSA for a banking licence to potentially establish a banking operation under the possible name of Home and Savings Bank. Add to this the concept of Metro Bank and most recently Walton & Co which is being created by Panmure Gordon and at last we are seeing some much welcomed sparks of entrepreneurialism and initiative coming into this depressed market.
- Overseas entrants are also waiting in the wings but it would be helpful if the City of London started to get back onto a positive footing again and realise its great strengths and not just sigh from its failings. Success attracts success and London still has a lot to be proud of. Thus the opportunity of attracting more banking investment from both China and India is perfectly sensible and both already have a reasonable presence, with even the Chinese entering the UK mortgage market. Even in Brazil, the São Paulo based Itau Unibanco, which is the largest non-government lender in Brazil has not denied an interest and they could well be one of the contenders for the hived off branches of RBS and LloydsTSB.
- So if the City wants to gain some respect it should start addressing the negatives and encouraging the positives and get back to what it does best – making money.
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Another area that needs to change or at least evolve was highlighted last week in a fascinating article in the New Statesman by David Blanchflower, the economist and ex-member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC). In this he suitably castigated George Osborne for his stated policies and seemingly ignored his advice. In his words, "he seems hell bent on creating the Osborne Dip". He quotes Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the IMF to support his argument against the immediate post-election tough-cutting proposals of Osborne "in most countries, growth is still supported by government policies. For as long as you do not have private demand strong enough to offset the need of public policy, you shouldn't exit".
He also went on to criticise the MPC itself in its narrowness of brief and remit in looking so fixatedly at inflation and not only that but at only the narrow measure of inflation, CPI which excludes house prices. His point being that if they had taken account of house prices as part of the inflation measurement then rates would have been higher at an earlier stage, and thus could have helped prevent or at least reduce the credit bubble that followed. In his view they missed the clues for the recession and acted too late on rates on the way up and too late on rates on the way down.
In this view it is thus 'not fit for purpose'. His points are certainly correct, but rather than disbanding it altogether, it certainly needs reform. Heaven forefend that we return to control of rates solely back to the murky world of the politicians.
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Darwinian evolution is taking place at some speed in the world of private equity as well. Last year the measure of the lack of vibrancy in this sector was shown by the number of deals – just 117 which is their lowest in 25 years and at value levels going back to 1995.
The prevalent system of private equity was to use borrowing (or leverage) to re-engineer and restructure businesses or their sub units by way of buy out or something similar. Now however with the shortage of borrowing and the days of mega-buy outs gone, the private equity beasts are evolving fast.
The new world is closer to that of a financial version of Burke & Hare, with corporate cadavers being taken and their bodies being used for 'other purposes'. More companies are being brought out of receivership than at any time since 1993. With the new fad for corporate MFI or 'pre-pack' bankruptcy, this has meant that private equity firms need a new style of staff. Rather than the financial warlocks that could create complicated accounting structures, they seem to now require good old-fashioned business operators to rebuild defunct businesses and bring them back to life. This sounds like a wholly encouraging development; given the number of failures coming through, often with good companies being squeezed by cash flow constrictions (back to the banking system again) the opportunities of rescuing good value from untimely failure seem most positive.
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And finally......the headline of the week must be.......
Floor caves under Weight Watchers weigh-in
No-one injured – but dieters might have extra motivation to shed pounds
As a Weight Watchers group gathered for a routine weigh-in, the dieters got an idea of how far they still had to go: The floor underneath them collapsed, a Swedish newspaper reports.
"We suddenly heard a huge thud; we almost thought it was an earthquake and everything flew up in the air," one of about 20 group members said to the Smalandsposten newspaper. "The floor collapsed in one corner of the room and along the walls."
After the initial collapse on Wednesday evening, the floor started to cave in other parts of the room, and the stench of sewage crept into the clinic, which is in Vaxjo, a city in south central Sweden. No one was injured, and the cause of the collapse is still under investigation.
The group is looking, not unsurprisingly for an alternate location for future meetings. I think it is frankly one of the best incentives to lose weight – I hope they find a building with the right load (or is it lardy) factor to support them.
Have a good week.
Justin A. Urquhart Stewart
Director
Seven Investment Management Limited
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