Lending targets vanish

To be fair, the coalition agreement only said there would be "consideration" of the use of net lending targets for the nationalised banks to encourage the flow of credit to small companies. But today's 40-odd page paper entitled Financing Business Growth did not mention those deliberations. Instead, David Cameron said: "The trouble is … [lending agreements] promise to do a certain amount of lending to one sector but they'll shrink it somewhere else." So have lending targets been quietly dropped? It sounds as if they have. Now for that other coalition pledge to "bring forward detailed proposals for robust action to tackle unacceptable bonuses in the financial services sector". Or maybe not.