10 beers pretty....
A big thanks to Tim Price for recently bringing to our attention the following item that we had overlooked. It's a review by John Lanchester, of "It’s Finished" that appeared in the London Review of Books, May 2009 edition.
"HBOS' share price began to drop last summer when the City became nervous about its reliance on UK mortgages. There were denials that the firm was in crisis, which is always a terrible sign. In September 2008, the Big Four bank Lloyds bought HBOS after its boss, Victor Blank, this is the part you couldn't make up, bumped into Gordon Brown at a drinks party and got him to give an assurance that a takeover would not be referred to the monopolies commission..
Most of us have had a few drinks at a party and done something embarrassing, usually along the lines of 'I've-always-fancied-you-isn't-it-time-we-did-something-about-it?', but let's take comfort in the following truth: none of us has ever done anything as embarrassing as buying HBOS."