Economy
Lloyds Banking Group in re-branding drive |
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| Economy | |
| Written by Roberta Murray | |
| Monday, 01 February 2010 | |
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Morning Business News, Monday 01 Feb: Lloyds Banking Group, RBS, JPMorgan Chase, house prices, Chinese sanctions threat and British Airways.
Lloyds Banking Group (LON:LLOY) is set to launch a re-branding exercise that will seek to reposition its Bank of Scotland units. The result: the Halifax brand name is likely to disappear from all Bank of Scotland branches. This does not however mean Lloyds Banking Group is dropping the historic Halifax brand altogether; instead the group appears to be keen to diminish the HBOS brand. The bank said its intention was to persuade customers that it was returning to "traditional values of relationship banking, customer empathy and expertise". RBSRBS (LON:RBS) has been forced back to the negotiating table in the $2bn (£1.3bn) sale of RBS Sempra, its commodities trading unit, after its preferred buyer balked at President Obama’s clampdown on proprietary trading. JPMorgan Chase, which was named two weeks ago as the exclusive bidder for RBS’s 51% stake in RBS Sempra, has ruled out the purchase of the North American assets in the wake of Mr Obama’s ruling, the Times reports. House PricesBritish house prices are set to rise 6% this year, the Centre for Economics and Business Research has said, revising its forecast of two to four percent growth made only a month ago. The strength of the upturn has taken many economists by surprise, and while the CEBR was one of the few forecasters to anticipate that 2009 would see house prices return to growth it did not predict the rate of mortgage lending already seen this year, the Telegraph reports. Chinese sanctionsAerospace executives and the US government reacted with concern to a Chinese threat to impose sanctions on American groups involved in a $6.4bn arms deal with Taiwan. Giovanni Bisignani, director-general of the International Air Transport Association, the global airline industry body, called for fresh talks between Beijing and Washington to avert a crisis over the arms package, the FT reports. British AirwaysThe planned global tie-up between British Airways (LON:BAY), American Airlines and Iberia has moved closer to securing a regulatory green light in Europe. Both BA and the European Commission, Europe’s top antitrust watchdog, confirmed on Sunday that competition officials had started consulting with rival airlines, such as Virgin Atlantic, about the concessions that the three carriers had offered to address potential anti-competitive implications of the deal, the FT reports.
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