We would love to hear your thoughts about our site and services, please take our survey here.
Thanks for this Sheltie! Perhaps there is some hope!
Sufcessex, the whole company is asleep at the wheel. I worked there as MD for more than 5 years. The board is asleep, the previous chairman a total lord fraud (he was a brexiteer, knew LBG would be hurt by Brexit and did not set a strategy to counter value destruction), the previous CEO sat in his office never visiting business and the culture is internally focused on meaningless meetings and massive PPT's with LGBTQ metrics. The balance sheet is extremely profitable but fee revenue will never be a big part because of strategy, culture and present staff.
Hardup, That is soo right! I was given deferred compensation (some deferred 5 years...) after working there for a few years and every single share allocation is under water, a lot. Yes, they pay dividends but not last year...I have absolutely no confidence this share will outperform any banking index unless LBG's strategy and culture changes, none of which is really realistic in the medium term. One can't even sell calls as they only have options in the US and they are not liquid.
I share your sentiment...
Peter Drucker: "Culture eats strategy for breakfast".
That's the problem....
I know Jonas, he is a good dude.
BUT this is just empty virtue signalling from Lloyds. They never tell you exactly what the B-plan is ("helping Britain Prosper"??), how the proposition will improved and how they will build higher revenue or market share.
They rather talk about ESG or "diversity". This is a reflection of culture. No-one is working on new products or services but spend all days in massive meetings talking to each other...
At least we know Charlie is a good cyclist!
I agree. BUT having worked at Lloyds for about six years in a Managing Director role I saw little focus on the share price embedded in KPI's or culture. The company was VERY INTERNALLY FOCUSED with an obsession with identity politics and virtual signalling "minority" groups fighting for senior management attention and senior appointments. The previous CEO (AHO) rarely, if ever, visited the businesses and chatted to people to understand what was going on. Instead every rare interaction with, even at my level, was extremely scripted and practised and practised before he arrived. This culture had no interest in innovation or celebration of qualitative and quantitate results.
There was only one senior manager, the ex CEO of the Commercial Bank, that provided any type of strategy with engaging leadership but he left after 5 years to run another bank.
Finally, the ONLY focus on share price performance I ever saw was part of the "long term incentive plan" given to senior managers only. Of the 7 criteria for pay-out 30pct was assigned to "total shareholder return". Suffice to say this was usually a zero....
So I think the company can generate massive cash via its huge balance sheet and maintain its high market share in retail. This can lead to great dividends. But it will never be a JPM growth machine due it UK only strategy, second rate staff and culture and inability to generate new exciting propositions.
To me you are into something, Lloyds may be better off being a UK retail division of a global bank.
Hi Longtime! I agree. Thanks!
The point I was trying to make was that they have previously (pre-covid) signalled they would move from a twice a year dividend policy towards a quarterly or even more frequent strategy. This is interesting to me as it could change the nature of the stock and the type of investors that would buy it. Does anybody have any thoughts on this point??
Cheeeers
I agree Cornsland (as I have written several times here). At the moment the future dividend strategy is uncertain so when and if we get a better picture that would be helpful. Also, are we even sure they will be implementing the "quarterly" dividends??
DividendMax seems to think there will be 4 dividends next year...
I am very critical of this share as I used to work there in a reasonably senior position and knows the company well. I am still sceptical about the strategy and if even if the strategy was a good one ( which it is not) I doubt they can implement as for 5-7 years they spend so much time on wokeness rather than competency. BUT this week something is happening with the share. So many banks had a rebound after this week's Chinese scare big volume and positive price action perhaps indicates that the share can come alive again. It's worth more that 45P that's for sure especially due to the massive cash generating capability of the balance sheet.
I am a relative new investor in BGLF. Does anyone care to spread some light on the rationale behind the company's purchases of its own shares this month (albeit small)?Thanks!
It's a horrible company which is reflected in the share price... The strategy, the culture, the product range just got worse and worse under the invisible and tyrannical AHO...
Lloyds is being impacted "by proxy" from the China real estate situation. In my view the Lloyds share, despite a new CEO, is continuing its travels below any European or Global Bank index for the following reasons :
1. Lloyds historically is a "dividend stock". Last year the regulators killed the slow build-up that AHO started. No good news this year has depressed the stock.
2. The only new news we have during the new CEO's transition into the new job is that Lloyds would be competing in the actual property rental business. It's, in my view as a ex employee, a typical result of the round the table "brain-storm" session asking " how can we make more money". It's an imbecile idea that further plunges the stock into UK real estate market risk concentration. UK investors are likely to already have this exposure and foreign investors who knows how they will react? so far, not well...
3. The company is without direction and the culture is terrible. Obsessed with the AHO legacy obsession with the UK (which may have been logical in his first 5-7 years) the company has hired domestically focused staff with a massive focus on "diversity by numbers". For this stock to "outperform US, or even European" bank indexes a new exciting growth strategy needs to be developed and the culture totally changed performed from "political" to competence and performance based.
Just saying....
Bank Vontobel here in Zurich also has a buy rating. Price target 62.
I took delivery of some physical share certificates a few years ago and those dividends to straight into my Lloyds Bank account on the day of the distribution FYI...
As a previous employee with deferred compensation shares I get the dividend via LBG's shareplansportal.
They credit the dividend to that account on the right date but the automatic transfer to my Lloyds Private Bank account takes two-three days... I would not be surprised if it the same of you deal with Lloyds or Halifax share services.
When I was an employee I had to deal with Halifax and it is possibly the worst share dealing platform I've dealt with in the three countries I have or have had investment accounts. They still take the "float" to make some extra cash management income...
It seems to me it has this pattern very often. Frisky start and the a slow decline for the rest of the day... Kind of a bearish behaviour unfortunately. Hopefully proper dividends will be restored before to long.
I just read this article in the FT. Amazing. How many more schemes did LBG come up with to trick clients just to make money?
In my 6 years there (commercial Bank) I was astounded about how the culture was so focused on coming up with quick schemes to boost revenue rather than building great client services and products. I spent more than a decade on Wall Street and even there clients mattered more than at LBG... Now they are getting into real estate investment and rental business... What could go wrong?
Hilarious!
Pointless appointment. The Markets business at LBG has been cut to the bare and probably rightly so as they only have UK centric clients in the commercial bank. Lloyds is about lending lending lending, not fee business.