Lloyds expects 'satisfactory' performance

Lloyds TSB said today it expected a “satisfactory” half-year trading performance, the bank's AGM was told today.

Good progress was being made across the group after a year of “considerable change” in 2003, shareholders were told at its annual meeting in Glasgow.

During the year, Lloyds sold a number of its businesses, including the National Bank of New Zealand and most of its operations in Brazil, as it moved to focus on core franchises and remove “significant earnings volatility”.

It also acted to reduce costs, cutting the group’s staffing levels by around 1,200 to 71,609 at the end of the year.

Outside the hotel where today’s meeting was taking place, union members protested against the bank’s plans to move 1,500 UK-based roles to India.

Officials of the Lloyds TSB Group Union (LTU) said Lloyds TSB had admitted 25,000 of its jobs could be out-sourced and warned 10,000 jobs could ultimately be lost in the UK.

Inside the hotel, chairman Maarten van den Bergh and chief executive Eric Daniels told shareholders that a key to the group’s future success was to increase its share of new and existing business.

They said Lloyds would try to improve its handling of relationships with customers in each of its divisions.

Asset quality was good and the group remained strongly capitalised, they added.

In a statement, Lloyds said: “Good progress is being made across the group and we expect to deliver a satisfactory trading performance for the half year.”

In March, Lloyds reported annual profits of £4.35bn (€6.4bn), a 66% improvement on last year.

Analysts at Barclays said Lloyds TSB was running at a small premium to some other banks in the sector, but its turnaround was going more or less to plan.

“Its life businesses are doing well and it’s more geared to financial markets than its other more UK retail-focused competition,” Barclays said.