"Santander agrees A&L takeover"

Woo hoo!

When I first covered this, A&L's market cap was £2 bn, so Santander seem to have timed this right (they've offered £1.2 bn).

So, Alliance & Leicester aren't going to spoil my winning streak - unless this goes sour like the mooted Texas Pacific Group/Bradford & Bingley deal, of couse.

Update, as JonB points out "... if your combined savings in Abbey and A&L exceed £35k, you need to move some elsewhere as soon as possible."

"Taylor Wimpey revalues assets"

I've just stumbled across a shed load of interesting statistics in an FT article of last week:

Between 1989 and 1994, housebuilders wrote off more than £1bn from their balance sheets – nearly a third of the value of their land banks. George Wimpey, which merged with Taylor Woodrow last year, saw its land values collapse by more than 70 per cent between 1989 and 1992*. In contrast, Monday’s £550m adjustment from Taylor Wimpey represents just 13 per cent of its UK plots**. It is taking a further £110m writedown on US and Spanish land.

* Which is what you'd have expected, using the figures here.

** I assume they mean "13 per cent by value", as total book value of all their plots as at 31 December 2007 was £3,879 million. TW own about 42,460 residential plots with detailed planning permission, so that write-down is a laughable £13,000 per plot and there's plenty more writing down ahead... don't forget that the stock exchange is valuing TW's landbank at barely half its book value.

Texas Pacific Group

Texas Pacific Group appear to be stumbling from one disaster to another.

They have pulled out of investing in Bradford & Bingley and are now thinking of investing in Taylor Wimpey at what appears to be a vastly over-inflated price (compared to its break-up value).