Help, please, asap, if you had a six figure sum in HBOS would you move it? And if so, where?

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Not for me, I hasten to add, it's for PIL. He has a Lloyds account and it's mostly in instant access account so he could go and TT it tomorrow. I said I thought he probably ought to move it to Lloyds, what should I advise him?

I've said I think it unlikely that anything will be allowed to happen to HBOS but all and any advice most welcome.

I've said I'll call him back tomorrow, poor thing, he's worried. TIA for any words of wisdom.

Everything I have (not much btw) in cash is with HBOS and I was just coming online to set up new bank accounts when I saw that they'd agreed a merger.

I've just seen the news too and dh has called fil to tell him, it's a relief tbh. He's hoping he's going to buy a house with most of it shortly so the 'problem' won't be as large. Thanks for all the advice on this thread.

WWW depending on the amount of savings he may be eligible to use Lloyds Private banking and investment services and they can help spread risk quite effectively but I think the entry level is about 250K.

Slightly tangential, but Times is reporting rumours of 40,000 job losses with the merger - can that possibly be true? Seems very high though I guess they're looking at 1,000 odd branch closures.

Does anyone know what will happen to our shares now HBOS is being taken over?

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Sky News says we'll be issued with Lloyds TSB shares.

Lyra - yes it does look like you'll get LloydsTSB shares, I think 0.8 of a share for every HBOS share or something like that. So if you have 1000 HBOS shares, you'll shortly be the proud owner of around 800 Lloyds shares.

If you are the registered shareholder you'll probably get a load of documents in the post to fill in and send back to effect the swap. You can then either sell your Lloyds shares or keep them. Lloyds tend to have paid a good dividend income in the past, so depending on why you are holding shares are not a bad idea.

I don't know how many you have or whether there are any capital gain/loss issues on this transaction, might be worth taking some advice if you can get it cheaply.

Thanks penona, that's very helpful.