Today they have fallen 22% to a new low of 223p ..are they another Marconi..?



The chart looks like one long suicide note.

The yea's have it over the pond !!! Even bigger bonus !

Pushed the Dow down though! Still in positive territory though and I expect it will continue to move upward shortly.

I think the banks will be hit again next week as Dow remains in more bear territory after the bailout was approved and credit are even tighter. Housing will also drop further as many banks like HBOS are increasing their mortgage rates.

Henry Paulson's ploy may not stop credit crunch spreading


Events of the past week have brought home the reason why Henry Paulsons $700 billion bailout, or whatever meaningless figure you wish to conjure, is essential, if perhaps not enough. Step back seven days, and the argument was that public money was being pledged to banks to bail out bankers whose excesses had made that pledge necessary.

What is apparent now is the extent that the seizing up of the world financial system is the problem of us all, and not just a few overpaid Wall Street plutocrats. That European Schadenfreude that saw it all as the fault of the turbo-charged Anglo-Saxon financial system has taken a battering after the bailouts of Fortis and Dexia of Belgium, Hypo Real Estate of Germany and Icelands Glitnir, the near-collapse of Italys Unicredit, and the government support packages for Irish and Greek banks.

Part of the problem, politically and philosophically, of putting together the Paulson package has been the impossibility of decoupling the interests of the bankers and the banks. It is unfeasible to declare Year Zero and ensure that the banks survive but their overpaid executives go to the killing fields. Bonuses, once paid, cannot legally be clawed back, however pleasing might be the prospect of financiers joining the rest of us in the queues for the soup kitchens.

Someone has to run the institutions after the rescue. Note the re-emergence of John Thain, the former head of Merrill Lynch and the New York Stock Exchange, as putative chief executive of Bank of America, one of the institutions most likely to survive unscathed.

The next question is, will it be enough? Frankly, the odds are not good. There are plenty of signs that the credit crunch has spread out of finance into the real economy. Another 159,000 off US non-farm payrolls in September is just one. If corporations, encouraged to take on too much debt in good times by those same banks, now find their access to credit limited, they will seek to reduce borrowings, delay investment and lay off workers. Those workers, and everyone else worried about their jobs and houses, will stop spending.

But they still have to fill their cars with petrol and put food on the table - so jumo into Oil and food shares, theres always something that'll make you a few bob, banks are the order of the day for a few more weeks though. Then I'll jump back into different markets - Utilities should be good soon with the on-set of winter here in the U.K :-)

Hope you guys got out of banks Friday looks like a big FTSE fall this morning

Yes, today will see a massive fall as Asian markets are already hit badly.

It is a big fall for HBOS - 163p at the mo.

Could be a god buying oppertunity, or could be Black Monday again.

HBOS already recovered to 170, but there will certainly be a lot of general forced selling today

I am staying away from banks, Fantastic oppertunity to top up on my Autonomy stock.

It's still too early to buy HBOS imo at 170p

decided to lock in all profits here

Good call, cynic

Glad I came out on friday at 202p.

actually, having dumped to 158 first thing, sp has been very stable at around 170 ..... bit of a "boo hoo" that i did not sell all last week, but there still looked to be good upside (prob still is) and minimal downside ..... anyway, albeit that the last tranche netted less than it might have, it was still at 45/50p profit from purchase price

Not if the talk is true that the banks are going to be part Nationalised. Talk that billions pumped in in return for shares, maybe preference. Nobody seems to know what the scenario may be but possible that exising shareholders MAY be wiped out.

If anyone has any history to share on this (I think Sweden may have done it years ago) it would be appreciated.

THE WORLD IS GOING DOWN THE DRAIN.

where did you find this bit about nationalisation, or is that only related to to BNP taking out Fortis (BNP is already part gov't owned) or the Icelandic situation?

It's all the news on CNBC, Bloomberg and BBC 24. nobody seems to know what is going to happen but all the talk is about the unlimited guarantee other nations are giving savers. Also that emergency plans are being drawn up to invest billions into banks in return for shares. If they take a stake in preference shares then existing shareholders will be OK. Otherwise, I presume at best existing holders will be diluted and at worst extinguished. Darling to give statement to Commons this pm.

PS Iceland has just suspended all share dealings on their bank stocks.