{"id":2034,"date":"2014-10-28T15:53:56","date_gmt":"2014-10-28T15:53:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=2034"},"modified":"2014-10-28T15:53:56","modified_gmt":"2014-10-28T15:53:56","slug":"still-paying-price","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=2034","title":{"rendered":"Still paying the price"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

In the wake of announcing 9,000 job losses over the next three years, the part taxpayer-owned Lloyds Banking Group is forcing employees, customers and shareholders to pay for its shameless incompetence.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Collective mea culpa?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The bank faces today (October 28) an additional \u00c2\u0141900m pound charge\u00e2\u20ac\u201don top of the more than \u00c2\u014110bn it had been previously slammed with \u00e2\u20ac\u201c for cheating its customers by needlessly selling payment protection insurance policies.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

These PPI policies, which are designed to cover repayments in case customers become ill or lose their job, were sold to millions, most of the time without their knowledge. Many customers who did purchase the policies were ineligible to make claims anyway.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Now totalling over \u00c2\u014111.3bn, Lloyd\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s PPI penalty charge is the largest in the industry. Analysts predict the bank to set aside \u00c2\u01411bn more for its PPI compensation scheme in the next year.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Unite national officer for finance Rob MacGregor explained that what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s most outrageous about the PPI scandal is the fact that it began in 2012, several years after the economic crash.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bWe were supposed to have this collective mea culpa from all the banks after the economic crash \u00e2\u20ac\u201c that \u00e2\u20ac\u0098things were going to change\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c but in fact inappropriate activity is still going on,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 said MacGregor.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bIt\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s at the root of all that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s wrong with the entire industry,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he added.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

MacGregor contends that the shameless mis-selling of financial products like PPI<\/a> will continue unabated if retail banks attempt to deliver the same returns to shareholders as investment banks used to.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bIf you do try to deliver that level of shareholder return in retail banking,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 MacGregor explains, \u00e2\u20ac\u015bthat\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s when you end up with the nightmare of PPI scandals, of inappropriate selling, and of a performance-driven sales culture that is broken.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Near stress test fail<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The latest chapter in the bank\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s PPI scandal comes two days after it was revealed on Sunday (October 26) that the bank barely passed a European Banking Authority stress test, which measures its ability to weather a future economic crash.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Lloyds performed the worst out of all UK banks which underwent the stress test, and analysts predict that the bank will not be able to resume paying shareholder dividends, with experts at one stockbroker saying they did not expect \u00e2\u20ac\u015bmaterial dividends\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 until 2016.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Lloyds has not paid shareholder dividends since before the economic crash in 2008, when it was rescued by a massive taxpayer-funded government bailout to the tune of \u00c2\u014120.5bn.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The bank can expect a tougher stress test in the UK due in December, as the Bank of England test is based on a larger fall in house prices. Experts have expressed concern about how the bank will fare in the BoE test, the failure of which will further compromise its ability to pay shareholders.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThese tests are to ensure that we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have to have massive state interventions in the event of a crisis,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 explained MacGregor.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bBut despite all that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been said about having a much smaller, discrete banking sector that couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have that kind of cataclysmic impact on the UK economy, these banks are still enormous,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he added. \u00e2\u20ac\u015bTheir balance sheets are huge, and if they were to fail, the repercussions for the British economy would arguably be worse than in 2008.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

MacGregor noted that Lloyd\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s weakest position among UK banks in the stress test plays into the bank\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u015bnarrative that makes the case for slashing pay and conditions,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 which he says have plummeted in recent years.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But Lloyds executive pay and compensation for top earners<\/a> continues to rise to astronomic levels \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the chief executive Antonio Horta-Osorio took home \u00c2\u01414.5m last year, including a \u00c2\u01411.7m bonus, while 27 of the highest paid earners at Lloyds earned almost \u00c2\u01411m a piece.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As Lloyds adds another potential 9,000 job losses to its 43,000 redundancies since 2008\u00e2\u20ac\u201dall the while deceiving its customers with fraudster financial products\u00e2\u20ac\u201dmany of today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s newspapers, from the Guardian to the Times and the Financial Times, were splashed with full-page Lloyds ads in the papers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 front sections.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The cost of these ads? Many run up to \u00c2\u014130,000 or more each.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The bank\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s message, as it slashes its workforce and destroys communities? \u00e2\u20ac\u015bHelping Britain prosper.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the wake of announcing 9,000 job losses over the next three years, the part taxpayer-owned Lloyds Banking Group is forcing employees, customers and shareholders to pay for its shameless incompetence.   Collective mea culpa?   The bank faces today (October 28) an additional \u00c2\u0141900m pound charge\u00e2\u20ac\u201don top of the more than \u00c2\u014110bn it had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[141],"wps_subtitle":"Staff and clients both pay for Lloyds\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 shameless incompetence ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2034"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2034"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2034\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2038,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2034\/revisions\/2038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}