LLOYDS BANKING GROUP ANNOUNCES SALE OF AUSTRALIAN OPERATIONS

Lloyds Banking Group plc ('the Group') announces today that it has agreed the sale of its Australian operations to Westpac Banking Corporation. These operations principally comprise Capital Finance Australia Limited (CFAL), a provider of motor and equipment asset finance, and BOS International (Australia) Limited, a corporate lending business. The consideration includes approximately AU$1.45 billion for the shares in the operations and approximately AU$0.1 billion for the market value of derivative contracts, resulting in total consideration of approximately AU$1.55 billion, or approximately £0.9 billion at current exchange rates, which will be payable in cash. In addition an AU$0.1 billion pre-completion distribution will be made by the Australian operations.

Well then the report was right a couple days ago, though the price was on the high side

Back above 15 bob a share.

Qtr 3 interim management statement Tuesday 29th October 2013

Citigroup Neutral 78.12 78.12 - 83.00 Reiterates

16 bob anyone?

Awesome! A H-O doing a great job. Think £1 by Xmas might be asking a bit too much though!

I'm now 48% up on these.

I had - as mentioned previously - as good as written them off at one point.

Aberdeen Asset Management PLC (the "Company") notes recent press speculation and confirms that it is in discussions with Lloyds Banking Group PLC ("Lloyds") in relation to a possible acquisition of Scottish Widows Investment Partnership and the formation of a strategic partnership with Lloyds.

The potential acquisition would add further scale and diversity to the Company's product range, thus complementing organic growth, consistent with the Board's strategy.

New 4 year high @79.95p

Harry, here's a link - Aberdeen Plots Share Raid For Lloyds Division

16 Bob gone.

Gap closed?

Now where to then? 110p?.........I wish!

HARRY wait for qtr3 announcement next Tuesday.

Uncrossed at the high of the day @80.12p

Cheers h. I assume you are promising good news???? Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy.......! ;o)

600 by Xmas

Which Xmas?

Note from Investec today:
Lloyds is, we believe, in very good shape. Although we do expect another weak statutory result in Q3 2013e, (reflecting a raft of legacy, one-off and/or accounting/tax issues), “underlying” metrics should show very material progress in terms of recovering revenues driven by sharp NIM expansion and a further decline in impairments. However, after an 11% 13-day surge, we now see Lloyds, on 1.5x 2013e tNAV, at fair value. We continue to prefer Lloyds to RBS (Sell) but see notably better value in Barclays (on 0.9x 2013e tNAV). Lloyds Q3 IMS is due on 29 October 2013 at 7am. We forecast an “underlying” PBT of £1.5bn in Q3e – marginally ahead of Q2 2013 and well ahead of prior year, reflecting a continuation of the materially lower impairment trends already seen through H1 2013. We continue to forecast a very sharp QoQ expansion in Net Interest Margin from 2.06% in Q2 to 2.14% in Q3 2013e. Even assuming “seasonally lower” Other Income, we still expect 1% QoQ growth in Total Operating Income to £4.7bn, with costs, impairments and claims flat QoQ.
In Q2 2013, basic EPS fell 98% QoQ from 2.2p to 0.0p, largely reflecting non recurrence of Q1 positive one-offs (St James’s Place, gilt sales, insurance volatility) and £0.6bn of fresh conduct charges. In Q3e, although we assume much lower incremental conduct costs, with the Heidleberg loss on disposal (£330m), the Australian DTA writedown (£350m) and other minor accounting noise, we anticipate an EPS of only 0.2p in Q3 2013e. Indeed, given that we forecast just 0.3p in Q4 2013e (partly reflecting an assumed £0.4bn conduct provision “top-up”) our full year 2013e basic EPS forecast of only 2.7p appears wildly out of line with the Bloomberg consensus expectation of 4.1p.
We downgrade from Buy to Hold. Our RoE-g/CoE-g-derived 80p target price is unchanged. We expect a 1p dividend to be declared in February 2014e."