Maintaining financial stability of UK banks
Auteur: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Nombre de pages: 38 pages
ISBN: 021555924X, 9780215559241
Edition: The Stationery Office
Date de publication: The Stationery Office
Description: This report examines the progress on repaying taxpayer support and maintenance of financial stability following action taken in the 2007 crisis in the financial markets. Action included nationalisation, the purchase of a large number of shares in RBS and Lloyds, establishing sector-wide schemes to guarantee banks' debt-funding and protect their assets, and indemnifying the Bank of England against losses for providing temporary liquidity. The level of explicit support has gone down from nearly £1 trillion to £512 billion, and estimates of the size of the implicit subsidy vary - from as high as £100 billion to just below £10 billion in 2009 alone. The explicit subsidy includes the fees paid by banks for their use of the Credit Guarantee Scheme which, to date, have been at least £1 billion less than the benefit received by the banks. These subsidies enable private gains to be made at the expense of public risk, and some of these gains have been used to pay bonuses to staff and dividends to shareholders, rather than enhancing the financial sustainability of the sector. This causes the Committee and the wider public much concern. For the taxpayer to obtain value for money from exiting from the support depends heavily on a successful sale of the shares in RBS and Lloyds. The government shareholding is far greater than in previous share sales and will require extraordinarily careful handling to protect the taxpayers' interest. Regulatory and political uncertainty over the banking sector will remain until the Government has responded to the recommendations from the Independent Commission on Banking.