any one got a feelling in their water how far LLoyds will go looking to to buy but just dont know when they are low enough

I think nationalisation is the best policy here HBOS are a complete mess dragging Lloyds down with them you may not like a neo marxist State allocation of bank assets but you will have to live with it.

Why should Lloyds shareholders lose everything to nationalisation? Is it too late to call off the merger with HBOS, should Eric Daniels go for making the wrong decision which at this time has damaged the wealth of Lloyd's shareholders? Was he conned by Brown and Darling?

Nationlisation would be the last thing the government would want to do, they might have to pay in more money and become the majority shareholder like RBS. But we are seeing histeria and panic starting again, Monday and Tuesday are bound to see some extreme sp movements.

nationalisation means political control, Brown would not be afraid to use more taxpayers money to achieve that end.

Nationalisation is the best policy lloyds made a mistake of merging with a basketcase when they should have said no.

The merger was brokered by Brown and Darling to merge a well capitalised bank with a heap of dung, the Government should nationalise HBOS and leave Lloyds as it was. The vote for merger was carried out by institutional investors that wanted to save their HBOS holdings sacrificing LLoyds at the same time. The only way the merger would work was if the recession was extremely mild. If they nationalise the Lloyds Group they are effectively stealing the assets of Lloyds shareholders to make up for the massive losses of other irresponsibly run banks. The Lloyds management were complicit and will no doubt have been promised peerages etc. to do the deal. Corruption and incompetence are the main themes to this plot

I'm sure they will fall tomorrow.

HBOS is losing 300m a week Lloyds need government help to survive .

mitzy ..... trust you had a satisfying valentine's day! .... on a less important issue, it certainly looks as though the banks are in for a torrid time again ..... whether HBOS should be the prime target or (say) RBS is another matter ..... BARC may get smacked too, through the backwash, but at the end of the day, i think their love affair with the kuwaitis(?) will be shown to have been a smart move

morning cynic I reckon BARC will survive also HSBC too but the others reading from todays Papers are heading on the rocks.

wonder if one will be able to short or even get in quickly enough tomorrow

I think LLOY will recover in time, although always was a "glass half full" person. HBOS not losing 300m per week on an ongoing basis - they have taken a (hopefully!) one-off and very large hit. If Daniels and co did not use this opportunity to sweep it clean then they are even more foolish than they were in going for it in the first place. Given previous solid track record I am happy to give him the benefit of the doubt. Looking forward, there are huge cost savings to be gained at the regrettable expense of thousands of HBOS jobs and at least the problems there are reasonably identifiable and not locked in uncertain values of assets classes we lay people know little about (an attribute clearly shared by the boards of RBS and possibly BARC). The actions of previous HBOS directors defy belief. Likely to be very volatile in the short term, but longer term gut feel tells me the taxpayers might do very well out of LLOY. Always DYOR etc.

Correct me if wrong but I'm sure a 8bn writedown was expected at HBOS, the actual figure was 10bn which is 2bn worse than anticipated. Part of this could be explained by a deeper downturn towards the end of 2008, so as long as the bod have been bold and wiped the slate clean, they shouldn't need any more more. The capital ratio's are still above the new requirements as stated in the trading update.

When this merger was announced in September I was very much against it, but took the view that Eric Daniels hadn't a history of making rash judgements, and he could see massive benefits for the future. We should know the answer within a few months, if we see no more cash requirements and no more writedowns we will have our answer. Time will tell.............

I expect it will be in and out of the auction like a yo yo best get the DMA up and running

dma won't help as sp has fallen off the cliff .... q i guess is whether or 60p will hold ..... prob good for fast trading but assuredly not for buying/selling without being able to watch

PIs could find it very hard get any trades away tomorrow, expect the normal excuses like systems can't cope due unprecedented volumes etc. Good luck to all who try tomorrow, I will be sat at my screen for first hour, but then off to golf.

at least no frost .... had to play 1/4-final on saturday as couldn't play yesterday ..... seriously cold and frosty which made life "interesting" at best

Well it's -6 degrees here, but not playing until 11:00 when greens are open.

fortunately our greens are always open unless the course pretty much closes itself - e.g. flooded greens or snow

played a few weeks back when greens were frozen solid, not easy hitting high shot onto well protected greens.

lloy only down to 57p at the moment, at least the markets are showing some sense after the hystera in the media over the weekend. Still waiting to buy, may have to leave a buy order lower down just in case.

u need to learn to think - lol! .... work out where to hit your approach shot so you have an esy or at least feasible shot in .... that may mean into the bunker provided not pancake and solid