The Credit Crunch

[eddiea1]

dont really know what to say its not good but i guess life has its ups and downs.....

[dave1]

but are you not only guarenteed 50000 in one account and the rest goes bye bye. shoe boxes fill them up and get a safe in your house bolted to wall. lol

£50k per bank per customer, if joint account £50k each. So therefore £100k per bank in as many banks as you need - obviously there is an upper limit restricted by the number of banks available but I don't know anyone who has that much cash! :P

Technically it's not per 'bank' but per banking license. For example, RBS and NatWest are covered under the same license, so keeping £50k in both means you're only protected in one of them. Similarly Banco Santander own both Abbey and Alliance & Leicester, so the same applies. You need to find out which banks own each other and spread your money between groups rather than 'banks'. There are lists of insitutions that come under the same licence around, can't remember where they are off-hand though.

You'd be surprised how many people have cash lying around - sometimes it's just a matter of timing. On another forum I frequent, a guy sold a house and stuck the £200k equity into Icesave while he was finalising buying another one. As of now, that money simply doesn't exist any more - he might get it back at some point, but not straightaway.

Alliance & Leicester have retained their own banking licence despite the takeover by Santander. Similarly Sainsbury's Bank is half owned by HBOS but has it's own banking licence so if you have £50k with Sainsbury's Bank and £50k with the Halifax, both amounts would be covered by the FSCS.

[Mike_B]

Alliance & Leicester have retained their own banking licence despite the takeover by Santander. Similarly Sainsbury's Bank is half owned by HBOS but has it's own banking licence so if you have £50k with Sainsbury's Bank and £50k with the Halifax, both amounts would be covered by the FSCS.

There is a full list of licences in this article: Full List

and a brief list of common, well known ones, contained in this article (click on the picture to see it more easily): Brief table

The situation with LloydsTSB and HBOS is as yet unknown, the merger hasn't gone through yet anyway.

[Scarlet Pimpernell]

What's interesting is that the Nikkei has bounced back big time, Dow Jones did too, and we are teetering on less than a 5% increase since start...

It's scary to think that HBOS shares are still sat at 92p today. The question is - is it a good time to buy any? I know the merger will happen, the gvernment is buying 40% of the combined LloydsTSB/HBOS, more shares created = more share value dilution etc - but surely at that price they make a good longterm bet, don't they???

All our pensions, unit trusts, ISA's etc depend on this...

[Parthiban]

I'm not sure, I was actually thinking the opposite when I heard about this.............my thinking was that these banks are now finished, as what investor would want to buy into these banks in this position?

[Scarlet Pimpernell]

I'm not sure, I was actually thinking the opposite when I heard about this.............my thinking was that these banks are now finished, as what investor would want to buy into these banks in this position?

I suppose they will be finished if the government tak them back lock stock and barrel (like NRock) - else surely the government will sell all the shares at some point at a profit???

It's a tuffy...I'm thinking of buying 500 shares in RBS and 500 in HBOS, and then just forgetting about them...it's a long term thing...also I reckon they might revalue the shares and give you a few less back at some point to "increase" the value per share...

I wish I knew somone in the know - now has got to be a good time to spreadbet, if you know what I mean!!

[84Stoney]

My shop in Exeter is a retail house furnishers. We have 10000 sq ft showrooms plus curtains and carpets shops nearby. We sell mid to high quality products, (not cheap ikea/dfs chineese mass produced tat.)

Business is not good! As mentioned, retail as a whole is way down and consumer spending is at its lowest since....well, before my time! Obviously with in this business we pick up a lot of sales from people moving house, which at the moment, they are not. These are luxury items we sell and in these hard times, its the luxuries that have to go first. It's a case of "well we were gonna spend £3000 on a new suite, but things being a bit tight, we'll make do with ours for another year, or two." This is the sort of thing I am hearing. At a time when prices increases are more than ever, with some products (especially from the continent) seeing 15-30% price rises this year alone, which is unheard of.

We are a family business, established 40+ years. Due to our loyal customer base and low overheads (owning the building compared with competition paying half million pound rents) we should survive the low, but is getting hard to pay the bills and wages every month!

I'm looking at sales around 30% down on this time last year. Which to many business would cripple them, but we are staying afloat....just. Have just had two members of staff leave, and are not replacing them, we don't have the budget or the the workload for them at the moment.

I blame the media, I don't believe all this is as bad as the scare mongers would have you believe. The average guy on the street does not really know what is gonin on, but is scared.

[aztecbandit1]

Our place (JCB) Have gone down hill really bad this week been making quite a few redundant over the past couple of months and today its got worse, we dropped our cab build from 248 cabs down to 127 a day which is the lowest its been since 1992 and its still dropping more over the next few months.

This week alone has seen the builds drop 55% compared to last year, so not good for us at the moment (even though our manager has just brought a nice new Jaguar XKRS and parks it by the front door !) All right for some ay?

Anyway i should find out Friday if i still have a job to go to on Monday, or if i'm put on reduced hours of work (3 day week) and if i do i'll lose over £600 a month and my LEX will have to go

They are saying it will be sometime into the middle of next year before they even start to recover from whats happening to the market?

Very fed up at the moment as you can probably tell :(

[spikes]

Our place (JCB) Have gone down hill really bad this week been making quite a few redundant over the past couple of months and today its got worse, we dropped our cab build from 248 cabs down to 127 a day which is the lowest its been since 1992 and its still dropping more over the next few months.

This week alone has seen the builds drop 55% compared to last year, so not good for us at the moment (even though our manager has just brought a nice new Jaguar XKRS and parks it by the front door !) All right for some ay?

Anyway i should find out Friday if i still have a job to go to on Monday, or if i'm put on reduced hours of work (3 day week) and if i do i'll lose over £600 a month and my LEX will have to go

They are saying it will be sometime into the middle of next year before they even start to recover from whats happening to the market?

Very fed up at the moment as you can probably tell :(

sorry to here this mate,hope it works out ok. know how your feelin as i was put on a 20hr week last year but over 5 days, but after 8 weeks i found another job :) chin up

[Bazza]

Its not all doom and gloom

our turnover this year is 80% of last years, and that is after only 6 months !

we have taken on 2 extra staff and still struggling to keep up with the workload

and discounts at wholesalers is getting lower as they clamber for business

fingers crossed and touching wood that we keep going the same way for the rest of the year

one of the new staff travels up from Devon on sunday and goes back home friday, as it is dead down there at present

[DJ Wozza]

what exams/qualifications do I need to become an electrician ?

[Parthiban]

what exams/qualifications do I need to become an electrician ?

Don't know a lot about it but I do know that NIC EIC certification is part of it...........

[Damer]

To answer the original Topic question.

Bad enough for me to have to put one of my Grads on redundancy notice.

I work in property.

I have never had to lay anyone off before, feel rotten.