Pique is an unfortunate emotion, one that could be costly for millions of bruised Lloyds shareholders. This weekend they have to decide whether to invest more money in the company. Lloyds is seeking £13.5 billion from shareholders, who are being offered the opportunity to buy new shares at a discount. The final deadline for applications is Friday.
The temptation for many will be to say no, no and no again. Whether shareholders came to own their Lloyds shares through Lloyds TSB or through its takeover partner HBOS, they have been horribly let down by both parties.
This, they could be forgiven for thinking, is a company that needs punishing, not rewarding with more capital. This, they might understandably conclude, would be a classic case of throwing good money after bad. After all, investors who subscribed for the three past capital raisings — one by Lloyds and two by HBOS — lost money in each case.
Worse, they were kept in the dark about how precarious things were at HBOS. For much of 2008, HBOS shareholders were repeatedly given a less than full picture as official revelations from the National Audit Office this week showed. So too were Lloyds TSB shareholders when they were asked to approve the takeover.
Even as Lloyds was proclaiming the merits of the takeover last autumn, it knew that HBOS was so badly holed it was secretly having to borrow £25 billion from the Bank of England just to keep its cash machines filled. Within weeks of irrevocably concluding the deal, it was clear that HBOS was in even worse shape than either side had admitted.
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The temptation to file the prospectus in the bin may therefore be overwhelming for many. Those who do will at least receive a consolation cheque as their rights are sold for them. The nil-paid rights were fetching 18.75p yesterday. An average shareholder with 740 shares could receive about £139.
But there is an argument that to shun the rights issue would be to bale out at just the wrong moment. Look beyond the panic and misinformation of the past year and Lloyds has a compelling story to tell.
First, it has been given a stranglehold over huge swaths of the UK personal banking market. Gordon Brown waived all the normal anti-monopoly rules to cement the deal. Lloyds boasts a market share of a quarter or more in current accounts, personal loans, deposit accounts, mortgages and more. This is market power that would never have been tolerated in normal times.
Second, the cost-cutting opportunities are considerable. There is vast overlap between Lloyds and HBOS. The scope to snip out duplication — in administration, processing, head office functions and eventually branches — is colossal. Sir Fred Goodwin, in happier times, became the pin-up boy of the City for his success in crunching NatWest into Royal Bank of Scotland, squeezing out billions in savings. The consolidation will be painful for staff — 15,000 jobs have already gone — but it will significantly boost the bottom line.
Third, if Lloyds is to be believed, the worst is over. Impairments, money set aside to cover loans going bad, have peaked and are going down. Margins, too, have stabilised. Banks are traditionally seen as a geared play on the economies they serve. They only need a patchy economic recovery to do very nicely. Modest and patchy, at best, is what Britain’s recovery is likely to be, but that should be sufficient.
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It comes down to this for those who subscribe. Their maximum possible loss is 100 per cent. If the bank did stumble again, or if the recovery were to stall seriously, then full nationalisation looks by far the most likely outcome, with shareholders getting little and probably nothing at all.
The maximum gain is rather more than 100 per cent. Over ten years, it is perfectly possible to envisage Lloyds trebling or quadrupling in value. It’s a geared bet after all. What about the odds? It will be a long haul but the chances are the UK will muddle through somehow and that Lloyds will too. So, a one in four chance, say, at the most extreme end of the pessimistic scale, of losing everything is set against a three in four chance of making a decent return, perhaps tripling your money.
These are high-risk, high-return odds, and attractive ones so long as you can afford to lose everything. If you can’t, pass. If you can, suppress every natural instinct and dig out the application form. Hold your nose, tick the box, write the cheque, post it.