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No UK bank has ever made a £1billion profit lending to small engineering firms in the East Midlands,
but they all did speculating on metals, vegetable oils, wheat, soya
and, of course, fixing the LIBOR rate.UK universal banking has traditionally been retail & corporate heavy - the investment banks have tended to be secondary.
Barclays made £2.8bn pre-tax profit from their Personal & Corporate Banking business last year and £1.3bn from Cards. They made £1.4bn from the investment bank.
Lloyds made £7.8bn from retail, commercial, consumer, insurance & tsb. They don't really do IB that much, other than treasury.
RBS - Personal & Business Banking £3bn, Commercial & Private Banking £1.7bn, Corporate & Institutional Banking £3.5bn loss. Even before 2008, their IB was dwarfed by corporate & retail.
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NotThamesWater
@mespilus
Depends upon your definition of 'financial services'.
To most people this would, some kind of instant access banking account,
a savings account, potentially a mortgage and various insurance policies.
Add on some foreign curreny availability, and
internet access and atm cards that function all over the world
and for most people that is all they will ever need.
What the banks have done is re-interpreted their Banking Licenses
as permission to use the security and value of domestic properties,
often by taking over de-mutualised building societies,
to bet/speculate on any commodity you have ever heard of,
and many you could never imagine.
No UK bank has ever made a £1billion profit lending to small engineering firms in the East Midlands,
but they all did speculating on metals, vegetable oils, wheat, soya
and, of course, fixing the LIBOR rate.