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Foreign banks urged to lend to UK firms
FOREIGN banks were yesterday asked to provide billions of pounds in loans to cash-strapped small businesses at a secret meeting with chancellor Alistair Darling and business secretary Lord Mandelson.
The government lobbied senior executives from Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan Chase, UBS, and BNP Paribas at a covert meeting in a bid to get them to participate in a government fund for ailing small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs).
It is understood that the banks were asked to contribute £25m-£35m each to supply capital to SMEs.
Although no UK banks were at the meeting, Barclays, HSBC, Standard Chartered and RBS are also being pushed to sign up to the plan.