Labour’s reforms will ensure new banks flourish
… to challenge big five: Ed Miliband to pledge creation of at least two new banks with minimum 12% market share in bid to fix broken system – Published on The Guardian, by Patrick Wintour, Jan 16, 2014.
Labour will set in train “a reckoning with Britain’s broken banking system” to ensure at least two new banks can flourish in Britain with a minimum 12% market share by the end of the next parliament, Ed Miliband will say on Friday.
In a major speech designed to show how a break-up of the domination of the ‘big five’ banks will help Britain pay its way in the world, Miliband will argue that change is needed ” not for retribution, but for reform”.
As the Guardian disclosed on Thursday, Labour will refer the issue of banking competition to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), with action within one year, if Labour is elected in 2015.
It will be for the CMA to define the maximum market share a bank can hold. Market share can be defined by a bank’s number of personal current accounts, business current accounts and business lending. Any bank that goes above the defined market share through a merger or acquisition will be ordered to cut branches, and any bank that exceeds that maximum through organic growth will be referred to the CMA.
The Labour leader will also propose the creation of a central register of business creditworthiness to ensure new banks have access to the same information about potential business clients as the big banks.
Miliband said that the new market-share rules, which were opposed earlier in the week by the Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, would produce change.
Setting out the directions Labour would give the CMA, he said: “This is not about whether we should have new banks – that is the question this government is still asking – but about how … //
… (full text and links to related articles).
Links:
stupid … I cannot let these questions, on HBB blog, December 9th, 2011;
World debt, auf Economy and Society, April 1, 2013;
Plan B, on WissensmanufakturNE, to be downloaded: (de, en, it, ru).