Steer clear of Britain's rotten banking sector

It's not the bankers that will suffer from Project Merlin, the £800m tax levy on the City. It's us, the shareholders in the nationalised banks, says Bengt Saelensminde. And that's exactly why you should stay away from the banking sector.

The big banks are angry. Very, very angry. And we've been hearing all about it.

News that George Osborne is hitting them with a surprise levy of £800m has sent shockwaves through the City. The chief executives of the big four banks are "livid', according to the BBC. And they have called an emergency meeting to decide whether, in the words of one irate banker: "they should throw their toys out of the pram".

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Bengt graduated from Reading University in 1994 and followed up with a master's degree in business economics.

 

He started stock market investing at the age of 13, and this eventually led to a job in the City of London in 1995. He started on a bond desk at Cantor Fitzgerald and ended up running a desk at stockbroker's Cazenove.

 

Bengt left the City in 2000 to start up his own import and beauty products business which he still runs today.