Gavin Scott wrote:Mr Q wrote:Gavin Scott wrote:Feel free to rough me up if I turn out to be wrong - but I expect you're about to see this merger/takeover stopped in its tracks.
Which, frankly, might be a good outcome. This is a deal which under any other circumstances would have been knocked back instantly by the regulator. I find curious that it has been hailed by so many.
I haven't heard it "hailed" by anyone - other than the short sellers who made a mint driving the price down.
Well, my impression was that global markets seemed reasonably positive about the news. HBOS shares bounced up from their lows, and it was Lloyds shares that were hit - that is, the deal was seen as good value for HBOS, and that Lloyds might have paid too much. At any rate, the point I'm getting at is that the government's view that this deal was necessary for "financial stability" seems hard to justify.
As for short sellers - I think they're an integral part of the financial system, and I'm disappointed that British, American and German regulators have now seen fit to ban the practice (though only temporarily). Short sellers perform a vital price discovery role, helping to identify market inefficiencies and correcting them. Let's not forget that the problems at Enron were apparently discovered by short-sellers - they help to uncover fradulent activity and other problems in the market. To my mind, that's more important than ever in the current financial environment.