HRG could be heading for a happy Christmas or a New Year headache

Outlook: Investors are reminded of the sad stories of Woolworths, Littlewoods and other departed general retailers of yore

Argos's tiny pens could become a thing of the past with its new same-day delivery service (Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

Is Argos destined to join the ghosts of Christmas past that used to dominate the UK’s high streets in the days before the information superhigh-way became retail’s big growth story? It’s true that iPads are doing away with those dinky little slips of paper shoppers had to fill in with their orders and then queue to hand in.

But the decline in the share price of owner Home Retail Group – exacerbated by the nightmare before Christmas of the most recent profit alert that stoked fears of a bleak Black Friday – tells it own story.

Investors are starting to get worried as Marley’s ghost reminds them of the sad stories of Woolworths, Littlewoods and other departed general retailers of yore.

But hark, is that a Good King Private Equity looking out on the Feast of Stephen?

Reports over the weekend breathed some Christmas cheer into HRG’s stock. Ding dong merrily on high! HRG has a number of attributes that might interest the Scrooges of the private equity world. They include net cash of £193m plus £590m or so of credit advanced to customers to facilitate their buying bigger ticket items on credit.

Combining these two gets you to £783m. That’s perhaps the sort of number that might get the private equity lords a’leaping.

In addition to Argos, HRG also owns DIY chain Homebase.

Strip out all that cash and credit and the market is valuing HRG’s two retail chains at a bit under £60m at current prices. That’s quite a Black Friday deal.

But before you join the throngs of the faithful buying in on the rumours that a bid might usher in a really happy New Year, have a care: the shares might be singing now, but what was notable about the weekend reports was the absence of any names behind the bid talk enlivening HRG shareholders’ bleak midwinter.

That shouldn’t come as too great a surprise. No one’s going to ride their little donkeys up to the doors of the investment bankers who’ve been putting the rumours about, until they know the result of Argos’ Christmas trading.

It’s not impossible to see someone taking a pop, particularly if there are good tidings in the post-Christmas update which hint that Argos could hold its own. But until that happens, expect a silent night.

Osborne’s concessions seem to be keeping banks happy

Well that’s a relief. Carolyn Fairbairn, the new boss of the CBI, thinks HSBC and Standard Chartered are going to stay put in London, despite their equivocating on the issue. Hooray!

Her optimism is grounded in the recent moves made by Chancellor George Osborne, who has decided that he wants to play nice with the City and its banks. Which means dancing to their tune. He’s already tweaked the tax system to suit them, and elbowed out the too-tough boss of the Financial Conduct Authority.

These gestures are not insignificant, particularly in the case of the latter. The failings of “light touch” regulation were made all too clear in the regulators’ long-awaited report into the failure of HBoS last week. And yet here we are apparently seeking a “light touch” chief executive to run the FCA in manner that keeps the banking industry happy.

Unfortunately Mr Osborne’s concessions didn’t stop a moany fund manager – in the form of the usually sensible David Cummings at Standard Life – from whingeing about over-burdensome capital requirements and regulation, and saying he’d be prepared to back HSBC’s departure, in an interview with the BBC. One does rather wonder if anything short of the resurrection of the old, failed, Financial Services Authority would satisfy him.

Mr Cummings might care to consider who cost millions of small savers, who pay his salary, more: regulators or cavalier bankers playing roulette with other people’s money?

But Ms Fairbarin is probably half right. Stan Chart isn’t going anywhere. Its new executive team, led by Bill Winters, who sat on Sir John Vickers’s Independent Commission on Banking, has enough on his plate turning the bank around without contemplating shipping its headquarters halfway around the world. When it comes to HSBC, which will announce its decision in the New Year, her optimism is harder to justify. Mr Cummings is probably aware of that, and may well be positioning himself to say “I told you so” if that bank pushes the button on an exit.

Where are all the houses the politicians promised us?

A rare piece of good news for Generation Rent. The Association of Residential Letting Agents (ARLA) says that just a quarter of its members are reporting rent hikes for tenants, down from 32 per cent in September.

Demand for rental properties has also fallen, although London was a notable exception which doesn’t bode well for the already eye-popping rents in the capital.

ARLA’s boss David Cox nonetheless says he’s hopeful that the trend of muted rent rises will continue, and it needs to, given the amount people are having to pay just to keep roofs over their heads.

But he also makes a rather good point: after an election in which politicians competed with each other to make more and more outlandish promises about the number of houses they would build, where are they all?

Mr Cox thinks we should be told. So do I.