More trouble at the Co-op

The Co-operative Bank has issued a cash call to plug a gaping hole in its balance sheet.

The Co-operative Group could cut its historic ties with the Co-operative Bank after the bank revealed a £400m capital shortfall. Losses have grown to £1.3bn for 2013, due to Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) mis-selling provisions and more bad loans.

The bank, which had to plug a £1.5bn hole in its balance sheet last year, is launching a cash call to make up the deficit. That would imply the Co-op Group has to raise a further £120m if it is to retain its 30% stake.

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Andrew Van Sickle
Editor, MoneyWeek

Andrew is the editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He grew up in Vienna and studied at the University of St Andrews, where he gained a first-class MA in geography & international relations.

After graduating he began to contribute to the foreign page of The Week and soon afterwards joined MoneyWeek at its inception in October 2000. He helped Merryn Somerset Webb establish it as Britain’s best-selling financial magazine, contributing to every section of the publication and specialising in macroeconomics and stockmarkets, before going part-time.

His freelance projects have included a 2009 relaunch of The Pharma Letter, where he covered corporate news and political developments in the German pharmaceuticals market for two years, and a multiyear stint as deputy editor of the Barclays account at Redwood, a marketing agency.

Andrew has been editing MoneyWeek since 2018, and continues to specialise in investment and news in German-speaking countries owing to his fluent command of the language.