UK banks add to market woes with raft of losses

Banks added to market woes last week with the UK's major players reporting a raft of losses prompted by PPI claims and the European debt crisis.

Managers agreed banks’ share prices would have sunk regardless of the numbers they reported, due to market turbulence, but Friday saw RBS, the bank 84% owned by UK taxpayers, plunge as much as 18% in early trading to about 25p after it announced a £1.4bn loss. Investec’s Max King and Jupiter’s Guy de Blonay blamed the prospects for the UK economy and the banks’ flawed business models as reasons for their almost zero positions in the sector. De Blonay, who holds only 1.5% in HSBC in the £752m Financial Opportunities fund, said: “The main issue with UK banks is nothing has changed in...