How can you sell a bank if no one wants to buy a bank?

Or a branch, come to that?

The proposed £2.5bn sale of 632 Lloyds Banking Group branches has been thrown into doubt after it emerged that only two formal bids have been filed.

Apparently the opportunity to be a mid-sized retail bank isn\’t worth all that much.

3 thoughts on “How can you sell a bank if no one wants to buy a bank?”

Antisthenes July 24, 2011 at 10:26 am

Government regulations and taxes that are stifling all small and medium size enterprises would probably make it difficult for it to survive. Hence your supposition is correct.

john b July 25, 2011 at 4:38 am

Estimated GBP2.5bn market cap is not an SME. It’s very nearly a FTSE100 company (current FTSE100 threshold is GBP3bn).
Alex July 26, 2011 at 9:25 am

Buying 652 branches doesn’t make you a mid-size bank. You need a lot of infrastructure behind that and all the people who already have that infrastructure already have their 652 branches in place. So for the rest of the world, this is just 652 High Street addresses and a shed load of pension liabilities …. err, staff.