The crisis isn't over yet

We've been told many times that the falling pound will save us from this crisis. But it's becoming clear that that won't happen, says Merryn Somerset Webb.

Think the banking crisis is over? Then you should take a look at the big banks' recent results. Flick through the numbers for Lloyds and a few things leap out.

The first is that 40% of Lloyds' outstanding residential loans have loan-to-value (LTV) ratios of 80% or over. That's frightening, given that the average LTV on their "impaired loans" is only 76.5%, and given that 13% of all their loans are in negative equity.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.