The body set up to manage taxpayers’ stakes in nationalised banks has said it will be “challenging” to sell the stakes held by taxpayers.
UK Financial Investments (UKFI) was set up to manage taxpayers’ shareholdings in Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds after they had to be rescued. It said the market value of UKFI’s investments in the banks was now £65bn.
When everything is taken into account every UK household will have more than £3,000 invested in the banks said UKFI. But if UKFI sold the shares now it would make a loss of £10.9bn, it said.
That loss, due to the fall in the value of the banks shares and investments, is less than the £18.1bn shortfall registered in February.
- BBC News
There are no words because… there are no words.
Meanwhile, London Mayor Boris Johnson has described the quarter of a million pounds he earns moonlighting as a newspaper columnist each year as chicken feed.
Cluck me.
13 Comments
Huh. I’ll have a bit of that chicken feed thanks!
cluck, cluck (likewise)
I have a habit of saying the wrong thing in the wrong way at the wrong time and making an idiot of myself, where’s my newspaper column?
I am so spectacularly in the wrong profession/industry/job
The loss-making efforts continues the approach described by “The Economist” as the worst possible approach. If the holdings should be sold at a loss, they weren’t worth buying in the first place. If they were worth buying, they are worth sorting out, and selling at a profit down the track. Instead it is more public funds gifted to private pockets.
Theodora – LOL – I think I need a newspaper column on that basis. I have a habit of saying things which normal people don’t say out aloud… I’ve gotten better, I actually think before I speak these days.
I lived in London – Holland Park if you please – during the Cool Brittania boom, and even then I could tell it was a 3rd world country going bad fast.
Why does anyone get paid a quarter of a million pounds to write a newspaper column?
Because he had to give up his normal job running The Spectator in order to stand for London Mayor and the old boys club at Tory Central think he should be properly compensated so they’ve arranged for another of their mates to give him a job (plus the insurance factor – if Boris isn’t given some controlled vehicle for freedom of expression he tends to burst in politically damaging ways).
Despite the “youngest old duffer in the world” act, Johnson’s quite clever. Not great at improvisation as his serial maulings on Have I Got News For You show but importantly, he is inclined to ‘stir’ in the proper Australian sense. I’m reasonably sure the “chicken feed” comment was meant to be humourous but given the economic meltdown and the will they/wont they argument on public spending cuts to tackle the national debt, not exactly timely.
DEM
Yes, he is quite clever. Not only a First in Classics from Oxford, but actually a Kings Scholar at Eton. Kings Scholarships are awarded to the top 15 boys in the entrance exams, and cover all fees. So, yes, Eton lets in duffers like Prince Harry (but only if they are royalty), but i’d say to be in king’s Scholar in an Eton 6th Form of close to 300 students, he’s no fool.
The King’s scholarship. Orwell was a King’s scholar. Got looked down on and di bugger all hence no Oxford.
It’s very clever that. Robs the prols of their brainy bunch.
Adrien
Yes far better he went to Oik Comprehensive, eh? And Keynes, Aldous Huxley……………
JG@11: Aldous Huxley went to a girl’s primary school. Certainly didn’t do any harm.
Yes far better he went to Oik Comprehensive
Well it didn’t do you any harm. Much.