Retail banking remains a concern, as does unsecured lending. However, with bid speculation helping the valuation, this should provide support for the share price.

Without a shadow of doubt Korea has done an excellent job.

They've beaten numbers by a little bit and given a positive outlook and there's good news on the margins so they seem to be doing a lot of things well at the moment.

I think it's very unlikely Alliance & Leicester will be around as an independent entity in five years time; it's a question of at what price and when, and there's a lot of bid speculation in the (share) price at the moment.

It's doing a very good job with what it's got. The cost beat is very positive for its efficiency, but the question is how much longer can it do this for and where is the growth going to come from?

Coincidentally the crews were actually in the midst of doing high-angle scenario training at our training and maintenance centre this morning when the call came in.