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Lloyds CEO says does not plan disposals soon - 18 Dec 2009 -
LONDON, Dec 18 (Reuters) - The disposals Lloyds has agreed to as compensation for taking state aid were a "very fair deal" but it has no plans to sell the assets off soon, the banking group's chief executive told the Financial Times .
To satisfy Europe's competition watchdog Lloyds, which was backed by the British government when it rescued battered rival HBOS at the height of the credit crunch, has said it will sell 600 of its retail branches, with disposals including Cheltenham & Gloucester branches, Intelligent Finance and the TSB brand.
It has up to five years to make the sales and does not yet plan to follow the lead of fellow part-nationalised Royal Bank of Scotland , which has already begun the process of disposing of the assets it was required to.
"There's not a lot of M&A activity going on so I'm not sure the timing would be best," Chief Executive Eric Daniels said in an interview published in Friday's paper.
Earlier this week Lloyds, Britain's largest retail bank, completed a record 13.5 billion pound ($22.08 billion) rights issue which was aimed at helping it avoid a state-backed scheme for bad debts. [ID:nLDE5BD089]
Joining that Asset Protection Scheme (APS) would have left the bank facing more stringent rules over how it managed its loan portfolios, Daniels acknowledged.
"For example if a company has borrowed too much, they can't afford to service the debt," he said.
"You don't want to necessarily foreclose on the company because you think it may have a chance of recovery but you convert some of the debt into an equity position. Now that would be a very complicated thing to do under APS."
The bank's loan impairments have peaked, he told the paper, adding that the "terrible concerns" about impairments, liquidity and capital were over.
Although the performance of HBOS this year had been "much, much worse than anybody expected," he said, he defended the takeover deal, adding "After you get through the lumps, this is going to be one hell of a deal."
"I think the HBOS transaction really does get us on a very different and much better strategic track."