Can Brexit make British banks great again?
Boris Johnson has got his wish for a Christmas general election - an opportunity to emerge from the Brexit stalemate which has infected British politics for three years. More certainty over the UK’s future relationship with the EU has sent shares in the UK banking sector up strongly in the last few weeks. Can the momentum be maintained?
Big British banks have spent the last decade lurching from one crisis to another. None have managed to fully recover from the share price annihilation in the wake of the financial crisis and since then, the sector has been rocked by a stream of lesser-scandals: the mis-selling of payment protection insurance (PPI), Libor collusion and money laundering, for example. But in the last few weeks, UK investors have been tempted by the domestic-facing banks. RBS (LON: RBS), Barclays (LON: BARC) and Lloyds (LON: LLOY) have all posted double-digit share price growth since the start of October, despite disappointing third quarter numbers…