HBOS: An old fashioned bank failure

Most of the bank failures of the Global Financial Crisis involved complex products or an excessive reliance on markets rather than good old banking relationships. The HBOS failure as described in last month's 400 page report by the UK regulators (PRA and FCA) is quite different. One could almost say that this was a German or Japanese style relationship bank.

The report describes the approach of the Corporate Division where most of the losses arose:

The often-quoted approach of the division was to be a relationship bank that would ‘lend through the cycle’. Elsewhere the division’s approach had been called ‘counter-cyclical’. This was described as standing by and supporting existing customers through difficult times, while continuing to lend to those good opportunities that could be found. The division claimed it had a deep knowledge of the customers and markets in which it operated, which would enable it to pursue this approach with minimal threat to the Group. It was an approach that was felt to have served BoS well in the early 1990s downturn. (Para 274)

What could go wrong with such old fashioned banking? The answer is very simple:

Taking into account renting, hotels and construction, the firm’s overall exposure to property and related assets increases to £68 billion or 56% of the portfolio. (para 285)

And in some ways, relationship banking made things worse:

The top 30 exposures included a number of individual high-profile businessmen. Many of these had been customers of the division for many years, some going back to the BoS pre-merger. True to the division’s banking philosophy, it had supported these customers as they grew and expanded their businesses. However, business growth and expansion sometimes meant a change in business model to become significant property investors; not necessarily the original core business and expertise of the borrower. In the crisis, a number of these businessmen, though not all, incurred losses on their property investments. (Para 318)

When you as a bank lend a big chunk of your balance sheet into a bubble, it does not matter whether you are a transaction bank or a relationship bank: you are well on your way to failure. (If you do not want to jump to conclusions based on one bank, a recent BIS Working Paper on US commercial banks studies all bank failures in the US during the Great Recession and comes to a very similar conclusion).

Posted at 10:04 pm IST on Sat, 12 Dec 2015         permanent link

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