TSB Plus? CYGB has a less flattering nickname

Outlook

(JASON ALDEN)

TSB Plus? That, I’m told, is how those marketing the float of the Yorkshire and Clydesdale Banks have been referring to a company that will be saddled with the name CYBG after being floated off by its owner, National Australia Bank. Unfortunately this latest “new” challenger bank will start its independent life saddled with all the sins of its past, branches that aren’t always in the best of locations and a low interest-rate environment that makes it hard to make a profit for even best run retail banks.

In contrast, TSB was cut loose from Lloyds with nary a skeleton in its cupboard. It took months before it was in a position to sell its mortgages through brokers and was dependent for its earnings on a portfolio of Lloyds mortgages temporarily gifted to it by its former parent. But its chief executive Paul Pester and his team were so quick to prove the naysayers wrong that they were gobbled up by Spain’s Sabadell for a fancy premium.

NAB’s been trying to shake the trees for a similar deal for what seems like forever, with little success. Maybe CYBG’s management team can pull a Pester and prove everybody wrong.

It’s not as though expectations are high, with the float price having been cut again (it’s because of uncertainty in world markets, you see). But unless and until they do, CYBG will have to put up with the fact that it has acquired an unfortunate nickname: TSB Minus.