How Safe Is B&b And A&l?

[grey shark]

This is actually total ******.

The crisis may not affect their CURRENT business, BUT according to an employee, A&L were poised to enter the BTL game, including 100% mortgages this October. He quite rightly suspected that this move would now be pulled.

After all, why bother entering these games when banks will be able to pick at the bones of Northern Rock - business at a discount!

You got a link for this Sledge ?

weren't B&B advertising on prime time television recently for BTL customers and 125% self-cert mortgages?

Yes they were advertising , had some sopey girl in a green shirt and wearing a bowler talking about realising your dreams and stuff with property ..............Hilarious , imo of all the main stream lenders excluding NR these look the most vunerable .

[needle]

As many people have mentioned savings rates on this thread, here is a list of the top interest rates available for UK savers (including deposit accounts, bonds, and instant access savings), pulled from fool.co.uk:

8.10% Abbey

7.50% Britannia

7.12% Standard Life

7.05% Stroud & Swindon

6.95% B'ham Midshires

6.90% Anglo Irish

6.86% West Bromwich

6.85% Derbyshire

6.76% Norwich & P'boro

6.75% HBOS

6.71% Northern Rock

Read into those numbers whatever you like. Here is some logic for a Friday afternoon: If an institution is in financial difficulty, it is likely to raise its savings interest rate to attract new deposits. 100% correct, guaranteed. It does not follow from this that all institutions with high savings rates are in financial difficulty.

Edited to swap the columns for readability!

Surely A&L, B&B and Barclays should be up there too?

What happens to those banks who NR, A&L, B&B have borrowed the money from?

Who has books full of 'assets' that arent going to be realised?

Who has taken all those 'assets', leveraged them and bought US mortgage debt with it?

Eh? Anyone? Anyone?

Wonder why Abbey are at the top? And shouldnt Barclays be up there too??

But dont panic - Everything's Ok In The UK ©.

Just go home and watch your sky-telly-box......shhhh.....sleep now....nothing to worry about.

[sikejsudjek]

Just mentioned on CNN that at least one other bank was likely to ask the BoE for a similar bail out soon. No names yet.

[PigInShit]

Surely A&L, B&B and Barclays should be up there too?

What happens to those banks who NR, A&L, B&B have borrowed the money from?

Who has books full of 'assets' that arent going to be realised?

Who has taken all those 'assets', leveraged them and bought US mortgage debt with it?

Eh? Anyone? Anyone?

Wonder why Abbey are at the top? And shouldnt Barclays be up there too??

But dont panic - Everything's Ok In The UK ©.

Just go home and watch your sky-telly-box......shhhh.....sleep now....nothing to worry about.

Spot on Needle.

We're all asking the wrong questions. We should be trying to find out which UK institutions have the highest US sub-prime related debts.

NR, B&B and A&L aren't the only ones I am sure.

[Sledgehead]

You got a link for this Sledge ?

Sorry grey_shark, I'm afraid not. The info was gleaned during a face2face with a "consultant" (yeah, riiiiight). My only reason for doubting him would be that he'd misinterpretted whatever memo it was that caused him to think this. Kind of unlikely. He really didn't seem like the sort to make this up.

Yes they were advertising , had some sopey girl in a green shirt and wearing a bowler talking about realising your dreams and stuff with property ..............Hilarious

I kinda thought she was cute in a pixieish way. Then again I have a thing about pixieish women. Should I be concerned?

[maker of things]

there does seem to be a lot of this about...

see you at the cashpoint

I got this too, thankfully my savings/ISA tied up elsewhere, is only my current account that is there

Getting my cash tomorrow morning!

Oh, and yesterday I got a letter through the post from A&L offering me a preferential mortgage rate for two years - they are trying to reel in the last few suckers left before it goes belly up?

Edited September 14, 2007 by maker of things

[CrashConnoisseur]

How do you all feel about having savings invested with these two?

Buy yourself a nice comfortable shooting stick...

[Sonic the Hedge Fund]

They are a very cash rich company with one of the best credit ratings of any bank including the likes of HSBC. Their performance to capital ratios is very poor as compared a company such as northern rock with similar asset and profits but NR has a much higher performance as they use borrowed money (highly leveraged) to create high turnover.

In some ways a credit crunch could actually help the likes of A&L who could expand their business at the expense of the likes of NR without having to cut margins or resort to taking on a riskier debtor base to achieve it.

This is worth reading:

http://www.alliance-leicester-group.co.uk/...ionjuly2007.pdf

A&L do not look terribly exposed to me, not much high LTV and almost fully securitised with long term notes. Unlike Northern Crock A&L are firstly a bank, secondly a mortgage lender, so they have other options.

I agree with Flat Bear on this one, A&L have played the securitization game while the going was good but they are not dependent on it like NR.

Edited September 14, 2007 by Sonic the Hedge Fund

[Guest Daddy Bear]

This is worth reading:

http://www.alliance-leicester-group.co.uk/...ionjuly2007.pdf

A&L do not look terribly exposed to me, not much high LTV and almost fully securitised with long term notes. Unlike Northern Crock A&L are firstly a bank, secondly a mortgage lender, so they have other options.

I agree with Flat Bear on this one, A&L have played the securitization game while the going was good but they are not dependent on it like NR.

How safe is JS sainsbury bank. it is part of HBOS - but is it ring fenced against HBOS liabilities? as it is half owned by JS sainsbury and half owned by HBOS

DB

[Sonic the Hedge Fund]

How safe is JS sainsbury bank. it is part of HBOS - but is it ring fenced against HBOS liabilities? as it is half owned by JS sainsbury and half owned by HBOS

DB

'fraid I dont know too much about HBOS or JS

but you can DYOR, it just takes persistance - I dug the A&L thing up from their corporate website

No 1. rule of investing is DYOR: Do Your Own Reasearch

[needle]

This is worth reading:

http://www.alliance-leicester-group.co.uk/...ionjuly2007.pdf

A&L do not look terribly exposed to me, not much high LTV and almost fully securitised with long term notes. Unlike Northern Crock A&L are firstly a bank, secondly a mortgage lender, so they have other options.

I agree with Flat Bear on this one, A&L have played the securitization game while the going was good but they are not dependent on it like NR.

Firstly -

Agreed.

But they are dependent on securitization to continue their 'pile-em-high-sell-em-cheap' mortgages and the profits that follow.

More relevant to this site is what will happen to the cost of credit/mortgages now and what effect (if any) will this have on the housing market?

Secondly -

Its important to remember that the NR issue is entirely seperate from the problems in the US.

But we know that there are billions (if not trillions) of securities, positions and equity secured on these US instruments in the UK and European markets.

Where are they?

If NR (or some other bank - Barclays perhaps?) needs to liquidise 'assets' because of the current panic whos to say some of those assets are not US issued (ie worthless) mortgage backed debt?

WTF happens then?

[DrBob]

As many people have mentioned savings rates on this thread, here is a list of the top interest rates available for UK savers (including deposit accounts, bonds, and instant access savings), pulled from fool.co.uk:

8.10% Abbey

7.50% Britannia

7.12% Standard Life

7.05% Stroud & Swindon

...

Read into those numbers whatever you like. Here is some logic for a Friday afternoon: If an institution is in financial difficulty, it is likely to raise its savings interest rate to attract new deposits. 100% correct, guaranteed. It does not follow from this that all institutions with high savings rates are in financial difficulty.

I don't think you should count the Abbey 8.1% rate in with the rest - it's got a major proviso. You have to put an equal amount into one of their sh*tty 'Guaranteed Growth Plans'. Rubbish!

If you want a great fixed rate on your savings, Abbey's Super Bond could be perfect for you. It offers an impressive 8.1% gross p.a. / AER fixed for 1 year. It is available when you put the same amount or more into a Guaranteed Growth Plan, or any other qualifying investment (excluding GIB and CTF).

You can choose between a 3 year or 5.5 year term for the Guaranteed Growth Plan and you can invest as part of your annual ISA allowance, or outside of an ISA as a Direct Share Investment. The Plan keeps your capital secure if held for the full term, and gives you a guaranteed minimum return of 10% for the 3 year option and 25% for the 5.5 year option with the potential for more depending on how the stock market performs. The Super Bond and Guaranteed Growth Plan are two great ways of saving in one, so call us about them today. If you're interested in more super returns on your investment why not consider our other Super saving products.

[Bearfacts]

How safe is JS sainsbury bank. it is part of HBOS - but is it ring fenced against HBOS liabilities? as it is half owned by JS sainsbury and half owned by HBOS

DB

That data was really useful ..... can I access it for the other banks and B/S ? Where ? I am interested in Scarborough and Birmingham Midshires

[munimula]

I'm currently advising my parents to move over £400K out of B&B into Tesco and Abbey.

Accounts are set up, they just need to click on the 'transfer' button

Every little helps

[234SALE]

8.10% Abbey

7.50% Britannia

7.12% Standard Life

7.05% Stroud & Swindon

6.95% B'ham Midshires

6.90% Anglo Irish

6.86% West Bromwich

6.85% Derbyshire

6.76% Norwich & P'boro

6.75% HBOS

6.71% Northern Rock

Remove your cash from NOW............

Put it in A&L.

If we all did, watch them collapse, then our money's safe together....

[Sledgehead]

Icesave and ICICI are fine....

Moody's financial strength rating for ICICI is C-.

That's what Northern Rock were rated.

When I say "were", I mean back in October.

Before the caspizing, they were rated B-.

[DabHand]

Moody's financial strength rating for ICICI is C-.

That's what Northern Rock were rated.

When I say "were", I mean back in October.

Before the caspizing, they were rated B-.

Give over, you are slyly conflating relative asset pool sizes with investment risk.

[A.steve]

8.10% Abbey

7.50% Britannia

7.12% Standard Life

7.05% Stroud & Swindon

6.95% B'ham Midshires

6.90% Anglo Irish

6.86% West Bromwich

6.85% Derbyshire

6.76% Norwich & P'boro

6.75% HBOS

6.71% Northern Rock

I've been finding this most frustrating... i.e. comparing interest rates for different institutions... Hruumph!

I've had the following requirements:

* Instant access (penalty in terms of interest is fine)

* Not on-line or postal-only (no way to kick up a fuss if they 'loose' my money - don't care if there is only one office for the whole of the UK)

* Competitive rate of interest.

With Abbey, the best on offer seems to be 5.5% requiring me to set up a £20/month DD rather than deposit the whole amount in one go. Stupid, IMHO, but rather different to the rate above. Abbey offered a savings account much higher than this - but it only allowed trivially small sums to be deposited. A&L blew me away with their 12% - http://www.alliance-leicester.co.uk/saving...x.asp?page=prs3 - but, of course, it has stupid restrictions.

[Sledgehead]

Give over, you are slyly conflating relative asset pool sizes with investment risk.

Give over yerself:

Moody's Investors Service ... downgraded [Northern Rock's] financial strength rating to 'C-' from 'B-'. - Northern Rock's long-term rating on review; short term rating affirmed - Moody's, Thomson Financial, Mon, 17 Sep 2007 07:30

... and ...

... [iCICI's] Parent ... currently has a financial strength rating of C- from Moody's Investors Service Limited (Moody's) - ICICI Bank UK PLC

So just to spell it out, following a run on the NR, exposure of its fragile business model and a freezing of its lifeblood - the credit markets, Moody's decide NR has the same financial strength as ICICI.

And if that isn't worrying enough, just consider this "accolade" from that same ICICI link: "Fastest Growing Bank in India, Business Today."

That should ring more bells than Quasimodo.

Edited November 16, 2007 by Sledgehead

[detached]

A&L have bought over 11 million of their own shares since August 1st, and yet the share price keeps falling relentlessly ......

Should we read anything in this?

[A.steve]

A&L have bought over 11 million of their own shares since August 1st, and yet the share price keeps falling relentlessly ......

Should we read anything in this?

Maybe A&L have so much profit that, in the absence of any use for cash, they prefer to enrich their shareholders more efficiently than by paying a dividend?