Dear Sir or Madam,

I wish to make the following request under Freedom of Information;

1. All email and paper correspondence between the Bank of England
and the Chairman, Chief Executive and other Directors of HBOS prior
to and up to the date of the public announcement that it was
subject to a take over bid by Lloyds TSB

2. All email and paper correspondence between the Bank of England
and the Chairman, Chief Executive and other Directors of Lloyds TSB
prior to and up to the date of the public announcement of its take
over bid of HBOS

Yours faithfully,

Peter Warren

Dear Mr Warren

We acknowledge receipt of your email dated 22 September (our ref FF 21623). We will reply in due course.

If you have any queries please contact the Bank's Public Information and Enquiries Group on 020 7601 4878.

Public Information and Enquiries Group

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Dear Mr Warren

Thank you for your email dated 22 September in which you ask under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (‘FoI Act’) for access to:

‘(1) All email and paper correspondence between the Bank of England and the Chairman, Chief Executive and other Directors of HBOS prior to and up to the date of the public announcement that it was subject to a take over bid by Lloyds TSB.

(2) All email and paper correspondence between the Bank of England and the Chairman, Chief Executive and other Directors of Lloyds TSB prior to and up to the date of the public announcement of its take over bid of HBOS.’

We will not confirm or deny whether we have had any communications with individual financial institutions. However, in terms of the FoI Act, I can tell you that, to the extent that any relevant information does exist, it is likely that such information would be exempt from disclosure under the following exemptions:

Section 41 – Information provided in confidence
Section 43 – Commercial Interests

We have determined that in all the circumstances of the case, the public interest in maintaining the exclusion of the duty to confirm or deny outweighs the public interest in confirming whether or not the information is held.

Yours sincerely
Stuart Allen

Deputy Secretary of the Bank

Your right to complain under the FoI Act
If you are unhappy with the Bank’s response, you may ask for that decision to be reviewed internally. In order to do so, please set out the grounds for your appeal and send it to Wendy Galvin, Public Information and Enquiries Group HO-M, Secretary’s Department, Bank of England, Threadneedle Street, London, EC2R 8AH or by email to [Bank of England request email] for the attention of Wendy Galvin.

If you are not content with the outcome of the internal review, you have the right to apply directly to the Information Commissioner for a decision. The Information Commissioner can be contacted at The Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF.

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Dear Mr Allen,

Thank you for your reply -

Whilst I admire your carefully crafted response, I cannot agree
that the information that you may or may not hold would, if held,
be in the public interest to be withheld.

Given that the UK taxpayer will, if the merger of these two
companies goes ahead hold a stake of about 40% in the combined
organisation, I think it is in the public interest that I as a
taxpayer and every other tax payer should know the full extent of
any talks, negotiations or deals that were done to secure the
'deal' that it has been reported as being 'the best deal on the
table'

Therefore I ask again for you to review your decision internally
not to consider releasing any information that you have regarding
any correspondence between the Bank of England and the Chairmen,
Chief Executives and Boards of Directors of HBOS and Lloyds TSB.

Thank you Peter Warren

We acknowledge receipt of your e-mail dated 21 October (our ref FF 21759).

We will reply in due course.

If you have any queries please contact the Bank's Public Information and Enquiries Group on 020 7601 4878.

Public Information and Enquiries Group
Bank of England

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Dear Mr Warren
Please find attached response to your email below.

Yours sincerely
Public Information and Enquiries Group

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