Yes it was only ever a temporary problem possibly caused by a tactical mistake which every business suffers from from time to time. I read yesterday that the mighty BMW almost went bankrupt once for essentially similar reasons and so did Lloyds Bank not so long ago.
I simply cannot understand why some scribblers on here insist on telling fibs, it is completely pointless. Anyone can go to the HMRC website and quickly discover that the dividend tax is 33.75% if your income is over £50,000
So, on current SP we have a very healthy 8% yield which togther with the huge retained earnings figure means this share is way under where it should be. I suppose the market will eventually come to it's senses, in the meantime, I shall be bying another sizeable tranche.
This reminds me of 2020 when my son was able to buy LLOYD s for 30p due to Boris Johnson's covid panic. "Lloyds is not going to go broke just because of a virus", he said and he was right; within months he had made a 50% profit.
I know of no insurance business which will not take a caning occasionally. They are in the business ofpaying for folks' losses and every so often there will come a load all at once. Years ago I got involved with LLoyds syndicate which at the time I knew little about. It seems however that these syndicates are made of a few dozen very rich men who have to "show wealth" before they can join in the profit taking. The manager explained to me that these "members" have to be multi-millionaires so that the syndicate can cope with the huge payouts that are made every so often when a major world disaster occurs.
Agree with Bobsto, after 50 odd years of observations I have concluded that the average investor is a bit of a chump and the so called professionals who take a rake off of your money if you let them are even worse. I even sacked one once because he was so useless at managing our pension fund's assets. Am I any better? Can't say that I am but at least I use logic and common sense rather than fear and herd behaviour when I am doing some changes.
These things are always due to bad management unless an over-arching situation has occurred such as a Silicon Valley hurricane for example. Remember the RBS meltdown for example of which the main cause was the pompous twat who was supposed to be the CEO
One has to ask what would be the point of such a ramping? The chances of a takeover are remote bearing in mind the size of the company and I doubt if a massive rise in profits is likely in the present circumstances. Also trying to manipulate the SP in order to make a quick buck by some big player would probably come to grief onsidering the number of such investors holding shares at any one time.