Wednesday 17 June 2009

UK Bank shares: Bargain or basket case?

Bank shares: Bargain or basket case?
As some of Britain's banks languish in the 90pc club, have the shares fallen far enough to be worth buying again?

By Richard Evans
Published: 3:26PM GMT 11 Mar 2009

Britain's banks have been a terrible investment. Many have joined the "90pc club" of companies whose share prices have fallen to a mere 10th of their former highs.

Shares in Royal Bank of Scotland, for example, had lost 94pc of their value at the time of writing, while Lloyds Banking Group was not far behind on 91pc. The figure for Barclays was 88pc. Even HSBC, which is seen as one of the strongest banks around, was trading 62pc below its peak at one stage, while Standard Chartered had lost 54pc of its value.


Related Articles
Bank bosses have bought just £1,500 worth of bank shares
Stock market: Opportunity of a lifetime?
Knives out for Lloyds board
Barclays drags FTSE 100 down
London shares continue to slide
UKFI mulls bond plan for bank sales

Shareholders' gloom is deepened by the fact that they are unlikely to see any dividends for a while and that, in the case of Lloyds and RBS, the Government holds a controlling stake, potentially bringing political as well as commercial considerations into their decision-making.

Contrarian investors, who are used to buying at the point of maximum pessimism, may think it is time to buy the banks' shares. After all, they reason, all the bad news should be in the price, while the banks could prosper again when the economy eventually recovers. In five years' time, today's prices could look very cheap.

Others say the banks are bust in all but name and could be fully nationalised if the recent string of bail-outs fails to work.

So should investors be buying bank shares or steering clear? And should existing investors grit their teeth and hang on – or sell at a huge loss? We asked the experts for their views.

JONATHAN JACKSON, KILLIK & CO
The bottom line is that all banks are high risk at present given the lack of visibility over the economy or the level of possible write downs in the future. It depends on what type of investor you are.

We don't think RBS or Lloyds are likely to be nationalised but the state's stakes could rise further if the economy turns out worse than we think. If you buy shares in Lloyds you are effectively buying an option on it surviving for three to five years and benefiting from its huge market share. Given the lack of visibility, both share prices will be very volatile.

With HSBC, the falling shares price is a reflection of investor concern that the bank may need to come back for more capital and the presence of hedge fund short positions betting on that.

Standard Chartered should benefit from the trend of survival of the fittest; it should be able to mop up market share as weak players fall away. It operates in a part of the world – Asia – that should experience stronger growth in the long term. It is well placed, but short sellers are attracted by the fact that the share price has held up well, so there could be more volatility. In the long term it's a strong bank and is much less likely to go under.

Barclays is not in as bad shape as Lloyds or RBS and has less chance of being nationalised. The market believes that Barclays will have to join the government asset protection scheme. The risk is that it may have to come back for more money. So far, it hasn't turned to the Government for capital, preferring instead to use third party investors.

In the long term, the Lehmans deal should turn out well. We will have more visibility by the end of the month.

MARK HALL, RENSBURG SHEPPARDS
There is a credible case for believing that the equity in the UK banks should already be worthless, given the scale of government intervention that has been necessary to keep the banks afloat.

However, with the authorities seemingly intent on avoiding full nationalisation, at least for now, the case for and against the shares is not quite so clear cut. There are still very realistic scenarios under which the shares are worthless but the upside could also be very substantial for any survivors of the current recession.

The only certainty is that the shares should be held only as part of a well-diversified portfolio or by those with a very high risk tolerance. The stories of pensioners with their life savings in one or two bank shares are very distressing.

NIC CLARKE, CHARLES STANLEY
We have a great deal of sympathy for those Lloyds TSB investors who bought a low-risk bank and through its management launching an ill advised acquisition [of HBOS] have lost a great proportion of the company.

We believe that the threat of complete nationalisation has been reduced significantly through this deal [with the Government to insure toxic assets]. Lloyds says it can now weather the severest of economic downturns as its assets have been thoroughly stress-tested.

The group will be loss-making in 2009 and there is a chance that it will be loss-making in 2010, despite the synergies from HBOS coming through, unless the outlook for the UK economy improves. And of course if the group is making a loss it is unlikely to pay a dividend, whether it is blocked or not. But at least the announcement [of the government deal] should improve the group's credit ratings and takes it a step nearer to a time when the market is able to value the group on an earnings basis. Unfortunately, due to the fallout from the HBOS deal that is the best that investors can hope for and any sort of recovery will take time. Our recommendation remains hold.

Putting a value on RBS currently is really about trying to decide what the odds are that it will be nationalised or whether it remains a listed company in say three years' time when the economy has improved.

Chief executive Stephen Hester's comment that "to make any forecast is hazardous" and that credit losses will rise "probably sharply" underlines the level of risk that investors are exposed to owning the stock during a prolonged recession. On balance our recommendation remains hold.

On Barclays, one key question mark has been whether the group has been conservative enough writing down its wholesale assets. It has seemed odd that RBS's global markets/wholesale bank has performed so markedly worse than Barclays Capital. Moody's cut its long-term ratings on Barclays by two notches to Aa3 on February 2 due to the potential for "significant" further losses due to credit-related write downs and rising impairments.

It would be helpful to know more detail regarding the Government's asset protection scheme. If participation makes economic sense Barclays' risk weighted assets will be reduced, which will diminish markets concerns about its capital.

And of course whether the macroeconomic forecasts improve/deteriorate in a number of key countries (US, UK, Spain and South Africa) will have a huge bearing on stock performance. Our recommendation remains hold.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/investing/shares/4973811/Bank-shares-Bargain-or-basket-case.html

3 comments:

Geoffreysmum said...

Until there is real transparency in the banking sector, I believe investors take a great risk in buying shares in banks. For example, both the BBC Radio programme 'File On Four' (26th May) and a Debate in Westminster (2nd June), exposed a very nasty scandal in one branch of HBOS, that on its own, seems to have lost BoS Corporate sums in excess of £500M. Frustrated by senior HBOS Executives continual denial of the truth of this matter, James Paice MP used Parliamentary Privilege for the first time in his long career, to expose the fact that one senior bank manager and executive involved in this scandal, was receiving briefcases of cash to 'assist' loans and that he was using the services of prostitutes, paid for by his clients businesses. (See Hansard 2nd June 2009)

In itself, one randy bank manager getting a few 'bungs', does not seem likely to further destabilise the economy. But, were it that simple, 8 MPs would not have taken the matter to Westminster and Vince Cable would not have joined them in asking for a full investigation by the FSA (the now very scary FSA according to Mr Sants).

HBOS would have everyone believe that the case of their Reading Branch and their manager, Lynden Scourfield, was in isolation and that he acted unilaterally - you'll be surprised therefore, to hear they have taken no action against this man other than to suspend him. Neither have they made any attempt to get their money back even although they know how it was lost and who was involved. The truth is, this incident was not in isolation and what happened at Reading was endemic across all of BoS Corporate. And HBOS cannot have their cake and eat it – either their three tier risk management structure is in place or it is not. According to their own reports, one man could not possibly have loaned £113M with no sanction from higher up and no alarm bells ringing. And yet that is exactly what HBOS and now Lloyds are saying happened in the case of Corporate Jet Services (renamed Corporate Jet Realisations after it went into administration). They are insistent that some £73M loaned to this company post April 2006 which did not stop it going into administration for £113M in September 2007, was entirely down to Lynden Scourfield. So what is the truth? And that is just one example of many transactions in a scandal and fraud that has affected thousands of people and is finally beginning to come out.

This is like a snowball that has been gradually pushed to the top of a hill - it is now starting to come down and is gaining momentum very fast. By the time it reaches the bottom, all concerns about a bonking bank manager will have been totally forgotten and replaced with the much more serious picture of how HBOS used SPVs/SIVs to systematically defraud its own business customers. When fully exposed, the damage this information will do to HBOS, their owners Lloyds and their share price, will be immense and the bigger question will not be whether 'one office' of HBOS was acting in isolation but whether HBOS was acting in isolation? Were HBOS causing a 'sub-prime' for SME's on their own - or were other banks doing the same?

Either way, until there is a real clean up of what has been happening in our banks, I do not believe this is a good time for anyone to risk their money by investing in these toxic chameleons. For further information see: Ian Frasers blog http://www.ianfraser.org/?p=856geoffrysmum

Geoffreysmum said...

Sorry, web link has come up with my name at the end. Link is:

http://www.ianfraser.org/?p=856

Thanks

investbullbear said...

There is opportunity in a crisis. We experienced the Asian Financial Crisis which was not dissimilar. All the banking stocks went down. There are many savvy investors who bought when the good banking stocks were oversold, and had fantastic returns when the whole sector recovers. Similarly, the banking crisis in UK will recover one day and the share prices will rebound. You won't get a good bargain if not for the fear in the market. Of course, the risks are there.. always.