I’m sorry you’ve not heard from me for a week: it’s been a busy time. A busy time, too, for finance ministers, central bankers and treasury officials all over the western world as country after country started to break ranks […]

It’s becoming clearer every day that what we’re living through is the biggest financial crisis since the 1930s: Alistair Darling was right in his Isle of Lewis interview with the Guardian a month ago. Of course everyone’s looking to […]

I know it’s scarcely credible, but I was wrong in my guess that the government would legislate to avoid competition procedures entirely in the LLoyds TSB-HBOS merger: an anonymous commenter here, and Angelo Basu at ConservativeHome’s CentreRight […]

Last night it was reported that the FSA would act to clamp down on “short selling“; the objective obviously being to deter speculative attacks on banks such as those on HBOS that went on for some time before […]

I’ve been wondering how, legally, the government will exempt the Lloyds TSB-HBOS merger from competition law; some of the reports about this are understandably fairly vague.

So long as both Lloyds TSB and HBOS receive over two thirds […]