The leaders of the UK banks are meeting Gordon Brown and his chaps at for lunch at Chequers today.
How nice. Not sure what they could be talking about, although a spokesman said the weekend meeting was just a
"long-standing lunch" commitment, don't believe a word of it.
Equally, although Mr. Brown ruled out another bank bailout earlier last week (see second half of this blog post for more info), expect to see news in the very near future to the effect of: "Government announces state guarantees for all bank wholesale lending obligations", or "Government announces guarantees to protect bank shareholders", or ... you name it.
I also note the Sunday Times comment that: "senior partners from KPMG,
Deloitte, Price Waterhouse Coopers and Ernst & Young warned they might
not be able to sign off the accounts of Britain’s biggest banks. The
auditors were not certain they could state that banks and building societies
were 'going concerns' under the terms of international accounting rules."
Maybe that's why Alastair Darling is considering re-inventing Basel II too ...
Whoops!
Chris M Skinner
Chris Skinner is best known as an independent commentator on the financial markets through his blog, TheFinanser.com, as author of the bestselling book Digital Bank, and Chair of the European networking forum the Financial Services Club. He has been voted one of the most influential people in banking by The Financial Brand (as well as one of the best blogs), a FinTech Titan (Next Bank), one of the Fintech Leaders you need to follow (City AM, Deluxe and Jax Finance), as well as one of the Top 40 most influential people in financial technology by the Wall Street Journal's Financial News. To learn more click here...
