A couple of weeks ago, the Spectator ran a cover feature on the number of Australian, Kiwi, South African and Canadian men (and they are invariably men) at the top of the British establishment. Not since the likes of Jan Smuts, Keith Park, Robert Menzies, Lord Beaverbrook and countless others were fighting Nazism, have men from the Dominions been so prominent in British society.
Their ranks have been bolstered this morning by New Zealander Ross McEwan, who is to succeed Stephen Hester and the chief executive of RBS on 1 October. McEwan will be paid £1 million a year, but he has had the good sense to waive his bonus for a while. McEwan has a background in retail banking, which may or may not be significant as more efforts are made to refashion RBS’s business before the sale of publicly owned shares, whenever that day will come.
That time, it seems, is near for Lloyds. Strong half year results and a healthy surge in the share price (74p, a little above the 73.6p the government’s purchase price and 13p clear of the figure needed to make a profit) have led to speculation about an imminent sale. The travails of Barclays, which has asked the markets for £6 billion to meet new capital requirements, might also have some bearing on the sale’s timing.
And, of course, there is such a thing as politics. The government will want to divest itself of the shares well in advance of the election. The sale can then be spun as a sign of sound financial management, renewed confidence in Britain’s vital banking sector and a general economic recovery. It throws the profligate Labour years into relief, and then there is the question of what Ed Balls would do with the windfall? ‘Same old Labour’ is the phrase on every Tory spinner’s lips at present; and, for the first time in a while, those lips have curled into a smile rather than a frown.
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