Conspiracy theorising

1. Yesterday Lloyds TSB reported that they are to repay £2bn on their bailout money (the economy has turned).

2. Yesterday again, Gordon Brown, survived a meeting of the parliamentary Labour party which might have been expected to unseat him. Perhaps Labour MPs felt the economy was on the turn.

3. Today, Lloyds TSB accounced that it is to close down all of its Cheltenham and Gloucester branches.

Could it be that these news items are in some way linked? Institutional investors in Lloyds may have needed persuading that the time was ripe to repay the bail-out. The government is, of course, the majority shareholder in the group. Could it be that government agreement to the closure of C&G was the price the investors extracted? It is certainly odd to find a company making major stock exchange announcements on consecutive days. Even odder when you notice that the good news preceded Gordon Brown's moment of truth, while the bad news came later.

If this is right, then C&G would effectively have been closed down in order to allow Brown to take some good news - the repayment of the bail-out - to the House of Commons yesterday.

Interesting thought, isn't it?

Comments

[Anoneumouse]

Funny...... that was my first thoughts when I heard about the C&G closures this morning

[James P]

So we lose 833 jobs to save one (which has less than a year to run)? Sounds about right...

[PeterMG]

Sounds about right to me.