Jim Armitage: Thiam is right to steer away from this ill-judged split

The weirdest banking deal of recent years is dead.

Credit Suisse’s plan to hive off and float its core Swiss bank always looked like a wrong ’un.

Splitting banks up is notoriously difficult to do — just ask RBS — and an IPO would inevitably see Tidjane Thiam’s board and investors cede partial control over this crucial, profitable, part of the group.

Not only that, but, as one M&A boss points out, a separately floated Credit Suisse bank would require a new set of non-executive directors and a whole load of onerous disclosure requirements.

Given its recent track record: a $5.3 billion settlement with US authorities for selling dodgy mortgage securities and yet another slew of investigations into tax avoidance in the UK, France and Netherlands, who knows whether more embarrassing nasties might need ’fessing up to in an IPO? And who knows what awkward questions its new directors might ask?

Today’s U-turn is embarrassing in the short term for Thiam, but it makes a lot more sense.

Another thing: the fact Credit Suisse is still having to tap the markets all these years after the financial crisis highlights yet again how UK-regulated banks are in a better place by far than their peers on the continent.

The EU’s Brexit negotiators might like to remember that when they try to wrest regulatory control from the City.

Lloyds is trying to do the right thing by those wronged in the Reading HBOS fraud, which saw six people jailed for a combined 47 years.

Having been painfully slow to contact the victims after the trial, it now seems to be attempting to compensate them quickly, with offers promised by the end of June to the 64 it deems possibly deserving.

But today’s statement says the offer is only available to those participating in the review being run by the bank’s appointed expert Professor Griggs. And there’s the rub. Many of the victims refuse to co-operate with Griggs because they fear a stitch-up.

So, to them, today’s olive branch will feel more like a brandished stick: stop causing trouble or you’ll get nowt.

Perhaps that’s the last message Lloyds wants to get across, but after a decade of hardship, victims don’t trust anything it says or does.