Goodband Viner Taylor espouse going green.

At Sheffield-based accountants Goodband Viner Taylor, Rachel Walker-Morecroft has espoused the benefit of going green in terms of company cars. For instance, company cars with emissions of 120g/km or less have a benefit-in-kind reduced to 10 pct of list price for petrol versions and to 13 pct of list price for diesel ones.
I remember being amazed how a friend of mine acquired a very nice BMW, which had a very good emissions level. Early on the German auto group had made a car specifically for this business market.
The UK government wants to use vehicle excise duty (VED) to get the whole country green but it was considered heavy-handed and its last attempt was viewed as retrospective taxation.

The Frogs take over British Energy.

In a major move the French group EDF is to acquire a major stake in British Energy. It is being the biggest foreign investment ever by a foreign group in the United Kingdom. The £12.5bn deal has still to be approved by British Energy shareholders
but is supported by the UK government, which has a 36 per cent stake in the nuclear power group.
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UK firm Centrica will take a 25 pct stake in the four new nuclear power plants, which are planned. However, there is concern over foreign control of such a strategic sector.
I wonder why the City was so keen to sell our power firms. German groups RWE and E.ON, Spanish group Iberdrola and EDF now have a dominant role over supplying us electricity. Let's hope they have our best interests at heart.

I am a bit depressed by the Manchester City result.

Can you really buy success on the football field? Manchester City walloped Pompey six-nil and there was the whole spectacle of Calamity James coming out and missing the ball and the ridiculous little dances by City players as the goals went in. They should have been booked by the referee and they might have been if the referee was the venerable Mike Riley. He did not do much for the Chelsea-Manchester Utd clash although the Blues had enough chances to win it.
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I read the Sunday papers and was flabbergasted to find out that Lloyds TSB has wanted to buy out fellow banking group HBOS for several years. The only figure being put out by Lloyds TSB is £1bn. This is the figure for cost savings but the banking group has not been prepared to announce how many job losses there will be.

Halifax goes down with all hands!!

The considered, precise view on the Halifax (HBOS) rescue by Lloyds TSB can be found on a good story carried by FT.Com http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d7fa43e0-8496-11dd-b148-0000779fd18c.html?nclick_check=1. This blog will muse on what was the glory of an UK mortgage bank with a balance sheet of £600bn.

For instance, the share price performance of Halifax was pretty dire and signalled major operational shortcomings. It must have been dire to consider a merger, sorry a takeover by Lloyds TBS, a bank, which has grown by mincing companies. Halifax board members and executives will know that they will not have much of a future in the combined group unless a leopard has changed its spots.
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Founded in 1853 at the Old Cock Inn in the Yorkshire town of Halifax, the institution grew from a building society to a major financial group cemented with the acquisition of Bank of Scotland to form HBOS. I did have the shares from the demutualisation of the building society but had to sell at around £4 due to household necessities. I also had a current account, which paid excellent interest but I was getting disturbed by sales calls from Halifax staff trying to sell insurance etc.

For many years Halifax was in competition with Abbey National, which is now owned by
Banco Santander of Spain. Ironically, Lloyds TSB tried to acquire Abbey National in 2002 and now must be having a wry chuckle with the start of the process to buy the Halifax, which has a market leading 20 per cent of UK housing loans.

Apparently, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has been involved in the negotiations since the deal will get a waiver from competition problems. However, I don't know what the European Union will think of that. Yet, speed is required for the transaction to go ahead and I don't think the British government would be interested in nationalising Halifax following its rescue of Northern Rock.

Halifax shares have another poor day.

The shares of British banking group Halifax have had another poor day and that is putting it politely. The stock market can be a pretty good indicator of future operational performance and it might be pretty ugly for the group, which was originally founded in the Old Cock Inn, Halifax, in 1853. The bank has stated that it has a strong capital base but its shares are closing down
18 pct to £1.90 (BBC Website).
I did have the shares ages ago and I had to sell at around £4 and was kicking myself as they soared up to the ten pound level. It is probably too risky to buy the shares at this level not that I am the world's top equity trader.
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I wish I had the dosh to buy a few as a bet, nothing scientific mind you, but I think the most I can muster up at the moment is a paltry £400. You need over a thousand just to cope with the commission.
In the recent past I did sign up to a Halifax account but the problem was that they kept ringing up (okay twice) in the evening to try and sell me something. I also had a car insurance policy and the problem there was admin in India, where we both did not really understand each other.

Halifax shares have recovered to 16 pct down

The previous blog had the shares of UK mortgage bank Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS) down to £2.29 but now they have recovered to, sorry, volatile trading and they
are down 21.6% pct to £2.21. This is not good. Apparently, the stock market does not like the funding structure of the bank, which is very reliant on wholesale finance. The share price performance is telling us that Halifax is in a weak position.
The Bradford and Bingley, my favourite British bank, has also been marked down by just under 15 pct, which is again not good.
www.searchaccountants.co.uk My wife still has some shares in Bradford and Bingley, which was once a proud Northern building society. However, it did raise £400m from investors and is apparently shrinking its lending. I was really unimpressed by B and B venturing into synthetic products.

The Lehman Brothers collapse is very sad.

With another Black Monday, the collapse of U.S investment bank Lehman Brothers is very sad. Consumption in New York and London will be hit by the loss of highly-paid jobs. For instance, New Labour has enjoyed a nice tax take from the City of London, so we will be all affected. There might be some schadenfreude about these guys losing their jobs but there will be ripples affecting everybody.
I suppose one positive aspect is that creative destruction is part of capitalism but is a bit painful to watch. Halifax (HBOS) shares are getting a right kicking today (15/9/08) and I think the fundamentals cannot justify such volatile trading. I did hold Halifax shares years ago but I sold them since I needed the money. There is a City adage of "never catch a falling knife" so I would wait before buying. That is just an uninformed opinion. The City tried to get some bid rumours going with the idea that the Spanish bank BBVA would be interested in the
northern institution. It is going at £2.29 per share at the moment.
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One of my readers says I go on about football too much.

One of my readers has told me that I go on too much about football in this blog. Well, I am going to try and diversify the topics I cover rather than go on about the golden age of Manchester City and players such as Bell, Lee and Summerbee. I should try and be more considered about British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who gets sliced up by Matthew Parris in his Saturday column for The Times.
For instance, interesting things are happening over the border with the SNP going steadily towards his goal of independence (Would the passport have a Saltaire?). The party is hoping to get North Sea oil revenues/European Union to finance their socialism in one country. Scotland could make it as an independent country but a lot of businesses, which have substantial interests in England, such as Standard Life might have a tough choice whether to relocate. This is if businesses don't decide to move to Dublin to benefit from lower taxes.
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Alex Salmond, SNP leader, is playing a canny game and the latest move towards a local income tax rather than have council tax is very interesting. The Lib-Dems want to cooperate while Labour, which has run parts of Scotland as a rotten borough, is looking lead-footed.

I still can't get over the capitulation to foreign money.

I suppose everyone in the Premiership must be licking their lips, but I still can't get over the capitulation of the game to foreign money. I suppose we will have to get used to foreigners trying to buy their way to success, when only
four teams will be deemed successful. Only Michel Platini seems to stand in the
way.
If Chelsea have another unsuccessful season in trophy terms, the business model of buying as many players as possible will have been viewed as an unworkable
one.
The English football authorities blithely talk about "investment in the game" when agents must be getting ready to gorge
themselves.
I quite like Spurs but I have to get used to a completely new team. The club seems
to have a nervous breakdown like West Ham and Newcastle even before the season has begun. The weight of expectation and funding costs means that a top ten finish is not
good enough.
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I apologise for wallowing in nostalgia about Man City.

I was reading in yesterday's blog and I realise I was wallowing in nostalgia about the good old days of Manchester City. In the current modern world the club is just a
poker chip to play on the table. Is it really worth £200m? Is Robinho really worth plus £30m? It is a bit late to complain that we have sold out. Those old-fashioned purists are outnumbered by the modern Man City fan, who wants to compete against
Man Utd and the Abu Dhabi finance is the way to do it.