It looks like 20 million savers are likely to be affected by the takeover by Lloyds of HBoS ( Halifax and Bank of Scotland ).

But what does it really mean to you and is your money safe? Who is likely to be affected ?

Well if you have less than £35,000 you will be fine HBOS is a monster bank, but if you have more than £35,000 you need to know that :

HBoS subsidiaries,
Halifax
Birmingham Midshires building societies,
Bank of Scotland,
Intelligent Finance

but what if you have savings in

Sainsbury’s
the AA
Saga.

If the sum of your wealth is great than £35,000 in the above companies you might want to spread it around a little, but should you be standing outside any of the HBoS branches, I don’t think think they are really really top big to fail, but then again I’m a Leeds United fan and I said we were too big a club to go down, if any one see Ken Bates opening a Hbos account let me know…

DaveN

Exactly 1 year ago on the 17th September, it’s was a Monday and I still remember that day as if it’s was only yesterday. You see on the 14th Sept was the start of the “run on the bank” and it was said that £1 billion was withdrawn by customers that day, and everyone was waiting to see if the weekend would help the ailing Banks situation, of course It didn’t and later that day after Northern Rock customers had taken another £1 billion, Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling told the world and more importantly Northern Rock customers that the British Government and the Bank of England would guarantee all deposits.

What scares me is that it’s was Lehman Brothers that had sold the sub prime mortgages to Northern Rock, then Virgin and AIG ( yes the one that the US government has just bailed out ) tried to buy Northern Rock, hmmm but AIG insured and underwrote a lot of Loans and Mortgages.

So Northern Rock saved by the UK Government and AIG saved by the US Government, Lehman Brothers well they didn’t get saved, But Barclays is trying to buy some of Lehman Brothers Assets, but why ?, is Barclays Bank in the bad place at the moment, but then today I see that HBOS has confirmed it is in advanced talks with Lloyds TSB about creating a UK retail banking giant worth £30bn. Is this business expansion or business protection, I mean which UK bank is going to fall, you kinda get the feeling that one has too..

Now the real scary thing is that my business is only protected the same as any bank account in the UK with a guarantee of £35,000 if anything went wrong. I bank in Natwest business & personal, but I have a lot more than that in the accounts. Now I know that Northern Rock is not the best interest rates out there, but hell it’s a nationalised Bank at the moment which would mean savings would be 100% guaranteed, and that means a lot more than the extra 0.5% I can get on interest rates. But then it is the UK Government who runs the bank, and they lose data everyday so what the hell should I do? I kinda feel like just stashing the money under the mattress!

DaveN