Member Info for LennyMac

Presumably you can produce the post you put on here in 2010 that shows the amazing foresight and prescience you felt. If not, your incrediblr hindsight, possibly plucked from any form of media today, just makes you look like a lazy, irritated d!ck.

Don't do it. Why, with all of the other options for shares out there, would you even think about investing in a no- div, scandal plagued, 75% government owned bank with ongoing legal issues and Neil Mitchell? Do yourself a favour and buy something like BP.

Be careful of the phrase 'Surely I would win..'. Nothing in that respect is certain. I'd add that there is probably a ghoulish, soon-to-be ex- PM out there today who thought the same thing...

Well, you have to admire his conviction.

No, I agree. You could be wrong.

Agreed about Osborne. If JK Rowling had written a Harry Potter character who was an evil politician, it would have been just like George Osborne: the voice, the sneer, the Dickensian physique, the sociopathic disregard for the travails of the disadvantaged... she wouldn't even have had to change the name! I presume that once the public ownership portion is sold off, there is no barrier to the reintroduction of the dividend?

I have been waiting for Tilting to reiterate his doomsday perspective on RBS, but strangely, we don't hear from him when the price is rising, and nor have we heard anymore about RBS v Neil Mitchell. I suspect the main reason for the lack of posts though is that we have been here so many times before, and at higher levels (remember the glory days of the trading range 320- 370; oh how we laughed!). However, it might well be that now the news is out that the government stake in RBS might be sold off at a loss, there is probably a bit of interest from bigger market players. This will also be one of the issues that a Theresa May election will resolve for the government; under Osborne, a mass sell off at a loss was unlikely because of the inevitable political damage to Osborne's brand viz his leadership aspirations.

Might be a bit of a drop everywhere on Mon if Le Pen wins the first round.

The front.

Welcome back buddy. Always good to get your perspective.

Fair enough. My post was a bit overbearing. I can't see the point of posting something like 'Brexit... couldn't really say; interest rates..who knows?..' but I don't have the right to demand that you take a view. My apologies.

You both need to be more definitive in your positions. As far as Brexit is concerned, there is no direct correlation between the BOE’s decision to move rates one way or the other and Brexit. To suggest that the government will wait and see what happens with Brexit before it changes the interest rate is far too vague and implies no informed position or insufficient critical analysis. I say this with all due respect to you both but yours are lazy positions to take because the BOE is ALWAYS in the position of waiting and seeing, every month, Brexit or no Brexit, because its primary job is to assess inflation and adjust rates accordingly. I presume you both have thoughts about the likely impact of Brexit; you need to apply the BOE’s likely (orthodox) decision making to those effects. For example, some current thinking appears to be that if the UK is barred from membership of the single market, UK production will be subject to all sorts of tariffs and UK economic activity is likely to decline. If growth falls and unemployment starts to rise, then rates should fall. However, they are already at about 0.25% so there isn’t much room for the BOE to manoeuvre. Conversely, if you listen to David Davis, the UK will emerge from Brexit with a plethora of new trade opportunities, unconstrained by the restrictive trade practices of the EU. New trade will more than support current industrial and service industry activity and provide a range of new opportunities. The growth that emerges will lower unemployment and support increases in wages due to capacity and productivity gains. When this growth appears to be fuelling inflation, rates will rise.

I think your assessment of the bank is right although I suspect that PPI liability has already been factored in by RBS. I am not so sure about your analysis of inflation. It isn’t inflation per se that prompts the BOE to raise interest rates, it is what the inflation implies that informs the decision. The BOE will only raise rates if inflation appears to indicate that the economy is growing too fast. A 5% inflation rate does not necessarily mean a rate rise if other indicators like wages growth and employment are weak. A 5% inflation figure might be caused by the drop in sterling. The UK is a net importer of food and so we would expect that a significant part of that 5% is simply due to increased supply costs; in fact the economic term is ‘cost- push inflation’. We might also see it if there was a sudden spike in oil prices. If at the same time however, wages growth was weak, perhaps below inflation and implying falling real incomes, or if unemployment was rising, the BOE would infer that inflation is not being caused by an economy growing beyond its capacities and so it would not raise rates despite the nominally high rate of inflation. However, if mortgage loan approvals or new car purchases started to soar, or wages growth started to rise significantly (indicating labour or skills shortage), the BOE might infer than in fact growth is fuelling inflation and then it would raise rates.

I am quietly confident that this year will see the last of the losses and that the sp will get a boost with each new set of results in 2018. I'd imagine that once the legal challenges are out of the way (RBS v Neil Mitchell nothwithstanding!), there won't be much prompting needed to restart the divs.

You mean privatisation as in getting rid of the government stake and returning to divs? Hah! And I think Tilting'so case is going to take a long time!! I don't think we'll see that before 2020.

Thanks. My average here is 835p so I have a while to wait, but I was in it in 2014 when it went from 860- odd to 1100p so I have faith. If anything, ISAT is in a better place now than it was then.

" Share price is falling so that says it all - it's nothing to do with us after all they are sophisticated apparently. " The share price over the last 6 months has risen steadily and considerably from about 170p in October; it certainly doesn’t feel like an sp that has ‘imminent collapse’ all over it, and it most definitely doesn’t ‘say it all’. In fact, if you were an attentive observer of the RBS sp you would know that actually it is really difficult to understand what the sp is saying! I suspect though that you are not an attentive observer, just a bystander who is (rightfully) outraged at the shoddy activities in which RBS had been engaged, but with a much less than complete understanding of the situation and a tendency towards conspiracy theory. " Don't you think that it is time that Mr Mckewan settled with all the outstanding issues ' legacy issues' repay the people and move on. The public would love him, the bank could then be privatised and instead of it being viewed as a point of weakness and a thorn in the governments side it would be viewed as a point of strength and trust so much so that all the advertising would be unnecessary and put all the fighting and denial behind it. Move on RBS " The legacy issues to which you refer are mostly court cases with regulators and governmental agencies; The processes are slow for precisely this reason. ‘Due process’ is by definition a set of deliberative steps to enable, as far as possible, and within the constraints of the law, a fair hearing of each side of an argument. I don’t think anything is being held up because of the whims of Ross McEwan. In fact, I suspect that he, like all of us, would like the legacy issues to be ended so that the bank can move on (and so that we can all move on!). I am also not sure that once the legacy stuff is resolved, that RBS will suddenly (re)acquire the trust of anyone.

Well, I am pretty disappointed that I’ve been genuinely interested enough to have pursued the conversation to such an underwhelming end. This case is a minor irritant to RBS in the scheme of things, but characteristic of some of the egregious things that RBS appears to have done for many years. Conveniently, Tilting has spread his thoughts out over three posts but I’ll try to respond to them all: " The case is a hearing and instead of 2 days went to 4. The judge could not decide and has taken it upstairs. The judge forgot to mention that he worked for Cerebus and that he shared the oppositions chambers etc etc. The point is that this case will open the flood gates. 25 lawyers on RBS side. They obviously think that this is important. " Firstly, you mean Cerberus, the investment company don’t you? It’s the little details that provide so much more clarity. Are you certain that the judge presiding over a case where Cerberus is historically implicated would have deliberately concealed the fact that he was an ex- employee, without fear of the conflict of interest being revealed and ending his judicial career? You’ll have to provide a reference for that. This case MIGHT open something IF it is found in Mitchell’s favour, but aside from that, I think a multi- billion pound organisation like RBS is probably armed with a pretty well staffed legal team as a matter of course. I would also imagine that any company would consider a legal action with a potential cost in excess of £100 million is important but you appear to be inferring something far more sinister.

You're right, it was a bit pedantic. Too much afternoon coffee and your posts made me chuckle. I'm sorry for any offence.

Have another go. 'The company itself is fairly unique'. I might add that 'unique' is an absolute term, like 'dead' or 'pregnant'; you either are, or you aren't. There is no relative state of uniqueness. But how about that share price!