Simon Maughan Quotations

Unless HBOS and Northern Rock step back, Barclays is facing a long uphill struggle in mortgages.

Macquarie prides itself on its entrepreneurial spirit. Macquarie in effect is run as a series of competing businesses. At times the management encourages different teams to compete for the same assets. They see it as healthy.

Lloyds would give them (BBVA) an established low growth bank with high market share. The deal logic is not compelling.

The proposal represents one of Europe's most effective commercial banks seeking to continue exporting its know-how to markets where these skills can accelerate growth at targets. BNP expands this way worldwide.

What this is telling us is that pan-European consolidation is on hold until we see the creation of national champions.

We were promised a turnaround in this business and perhaps it's a little clearer now why management change has taken place within their UK bank.

The structure of the results and the growth that was being delivered was very well flagged and rewarded post the pre-close statement.

It's entirely valuation driven. The market has valued them correctly now.

It's entirely valuation driven. The market has valued correctly them now, in our view.

The numbers are about one to two percent above expectations, maybe three percent better at the dividend level.

The key thing to note is the strength of the wealth management operations and the net new money inflows. The world is opening up now to UBS. There's money coming in from the Middle East, from Asia and China.

The key thing is BBVA is the one with the options, not Lloyds. BBVA needs to do something now to take advantage of higher profitability and high price/earning multiples.