Boardman's billion
COMPARE and contrast the National Westminster — far less dashing, but in its own steady way giving itself a favourite's chance of being the first British bank to announce profits of a billion pounds. Barc- lays is bigger, but NatWest is quicker at adding up its figures, this week announced a profit of £482 million for the six months to the end of June, and backed it with the most confident statement I have ever heard from the chairman of a High Street bank. That is not saying too much — bank -chairmen are bullish in the way that archdeacons are exuberant — but there was Lord Boardman forecasting the most vigorous economic advance, with the Nat- West marching in the front rank. Did this advance, I asked him, depend on cheaper money (which is no help to retail banking profits)? Only slightly, it seems: NatWest sees base rates down by the year-end, but only to nine per cent. Lord Boardman is a former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, and wise in the department's ways, but wonder whether he would be wise to offer a billion-pound target to a greedy Chancel- lor, just in front of his Budget, when he has sworn to cut income tax and could easily have an election in his sights. . . . Perhaps NatWest will profide a little more against some faraway debt, and make it £999,999,998 and, say, twopence.
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