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Many thanks!

Many thanks Will! Helpful for us foreign investors. Cheers,

I agree. While the digitisation of the retail bank must be regarded as very successful the consequent attempts to digitise other parts of the bank such as private banking and the commercial bank has not. As someone who was there for 5 years and has previous experience in digitising complex investment banking products, the model they had was ineffective. Digitisation of Investment Banking and Commercial Banking products are best done "in the business". LBG however followed they retail model with a highly centralised model meaning the money was spent by people who neither knew the products or the clients...
I don 't have a strong view on yesterdays announcement. BUT I found Vin Maru to be highly competent and thoughtful. I did deal with him directly don several projects. David Oldfield however was a terrible leader. He took over the Commercial bank from Andrew Bester who was a fantastic banker and a great leader. He really transformed the commcerial Bank a drove up returns very successfully. That all fell apart when Oldfield took over. Oldfield never met a client or staff and only focused on costs and top line. In my view LBG should sell the Commercial Bank and integrate SME Banking with Retail with product supply from a Global Investment Bank. They never get proper market share in Mid Markets and have no products to deal with Global Corporations. Their Institutional business is all GBP clearing... LBG is a balance sheet business and as such it can generate massive cash. Cash that is best returned to shareholders.

Thanks very much!

Livestock,
I worked at Lloyds at the said Brexit and PPI events... Just the memoryy of it all makes my stomach turn... The Brexit was a particular scandal as the Chairman was a Brexiteer and AHO was not. AHO's own Economist team produced a secret report about how bad Brexit would be for LBG. The report leaked (but we were not allowed to speak to clients about it...) and the conflict of interest between LBG and the Chairman's position caused dismay with staff. The rest is history... Investment banks seems unison on 63-64 price target. Hopefully the buyback will support EPS.

Thanks for summary! Surely faster than planned, but one can argue the price has become more attractive at these levels. Who knows...

Who knows? I am taking the opportunity to top up most of UK & Europe holdings up to my own (unscientific) benchmark. Financials are grim today but I suspect people are raising cash from mutual funds, etf's etc. which ebbs the market.

Problem is lack of strong competent leadership in the West held up by "climate-nazis" preferring to buy cr*p energy products from dictatorships rather than harvesting plentiful energy supplies from under our own feet in Europe, UK and the US. Michel Shellenberger has it right on his substack.

Damo, many thanks for your perspectives! I especially appreciate your UK/US assessment as I have been wondering why the trading characteristics were so different. Clearly the lack of liquidity in the UK has been worrying me, especially at execution, but I have grown more comfortable as time went on. In the 9ish months I have been building these portfolios I have found myself gyrating towards the UK. Because of the US characteristics (portfolio under water since exception) I have become more cautious. I am also worried about the USD... Also I appreciate your discussion about the "single owner" UK shares and I had suspected that it was driven by tax however I did not really have a view about the pro/cons of this situation. I will run my initial portfolio with minimal changes this year and try to set up a better system for monitoring the portfolio. I find this web service quite helpful but struggle to get the same type of info from the US...
Many thanks & Good Luck!

Thanks Livestock!

Damo, a wealth of info! Many thanks! I will digest the next few days and revert. Cheers,

Hi Damo, I just noticed this post. Actually looking at my spreadsheet I technically have 5 investments in this sphere which will be 10% of "AUM" ... Since I only built this portfolio during last summer and autumn I don't have much knowledge of its long term performance. To date the EUR investments are flat before dividends, the one Sterling is up 0.9pct before div but the two USD funds are down 15% and 5 pct respectively. The last two are down 10 and 3 pct after dividends... My intention is to add to this portfolio but will defiantly wait until I am more experienced in monitoring it. My focus at the moment is building a REIT portfolio across the UK and US. I run no leverage on my end (yet). Cheeers

Damo, many thanks for this! It appears that this board is vastly more informative and serious than boards of widely held shares. I am running 8% in this sphere across four investments in EUR, GBP & USD. I only put these on last summer and am still learning how to monitor/follow them so I am unlikely to change this the next few months. Good luck!

This is what he wrote:

"2021 has been a year of solid financial performance with successful strategic execution, ongoing investment and continued franchise growth. This has enabled the Group to deliver on its customer focused ambitions, as set out in Strategic Review 2021, as well as on Helping Britain Recover during the pandemic. It has also enabled the Group to offer high levels of capital return to our shareholders.

Building on our strong foundations, our purpose of Helping Britain Prosper forms the basis of our new strategy to profitably deliver for all of our stakeholders. We will look to deepen relationships with our existing customers, both consumers and businesses of all sizes, and meet more of their financial needs by making our great products more relevant to them and our channels simpler and more personalised to use. This will set the Group on a higher growth trajectory with more diversified revenue streams, while we retain our strong focus on cost and capital discipline. Enabled by maximising the potential of our dedicated people, technology and data capabilities, our strategy represents an exciting new chapter for Lloyds Banking Group.

I am confident that the Group's purpose, customer focus, unique business model and significant competitive strengths, embodied in our ambitious strategy will ensure the Group is able to deliver higher, more sustainable long-term returns and capital generation for our shareholders, whilst meeting the needs of broader stakeholders."

Each paragraph is fine but they do not belong together. It is typical Lloyds Bank powerpoint word sallad with no actual real life relevance in terms of the "WHATS", "WHENS" or even the "HOWS". .
I was hopeful but Nunn's first chance to bring a new expansive strategy growth has been lost. The conclusion is that as soon as you see another bloody ex. McKinsey consultant as CEO run for the hills (check Citigroup). When I worked at LBG ( a top 1% position) a tiny part of my total compensation was tied to the share price (less than 5%). We need a shareholder revolution as the franchise that LBG sits on is incredibly valuable but the past and present top levels of management are not able to translate this to value for shareholders, only for themselves.
Just look at what AHO did at CS before he was kicked out. It was ONLY about himself and not about the company or the shareholders. Today LBG is down, as usual, much more than peers. Why? the answer is above.

Thanks for these posts. Am a relatively new TORO investor and have also built an international portfolio of similar sector shares so it is good to hear your perspectives. I would add that at this macro-economic situation (inflation, rate movements, war, weak western leadership) it is probably important to hyper-monitor the credit markets behaviour and look for special updates from these companies on this.

Mot, I understand your sentiment. As a lloyds sceptic and also previous MD there (meaning I own quite a lot of shares) even I am surprised about the feckless announcement. However, today was obviously the worst day to announce. Let's wait to apply judgement until we have a normal market. LBG still has unbelievable cash generating capability (their balance sheet increased) and they seem to focus on fee income as well now (a big change since I was there a few years ago). While the top levels of management are not very good but it is early days for the new CEO. I hope shareholders will push them. I may travel to the UK for the shareholder meeting. I know today was a damp squid day but I think we should have faith (again)...

Given the West's reaction to the invasions of Georgia and Crimea for me it is hard to see there will be any medium term impact on the markets. Short term perhaps. This is because I don't believe the West has the Ba**s to opposite Russia in any substantial or meaningful way. I mean, it is only a few years since the previous invasions and Western Europe, led by Germany, kept building dependency on Russia. They were VERY upset when Trump demanded that they would pay the 2pct to NATO as agreed decades ago. Germany has even started using coal again... So all in all, it looks like Obama's red line in Syria. Meaningless.
Western Europe is already facing an energy crises due to idiot decisions in Berlin, London and DC and it cannot afford to cut off Russia in the middle of the winter...

Perhaps NASDAQ...?

It feels like HFEL is suffering a bit from the uncertainties from the Chinese property debacle and the associated fixed income instruments. I am "underweight" this stock and will not add until more certainty can be had. But I will not sell.
If you own other high yielding credit plays, like me, it is probably a good idea, in the light of higher interest rates, to really dig into their holdings.

Many thanks for this Genghis!

Henry,
I bungled my invite for today's presentation. If you are listening would you please give your impression of the call later?
Best regards!