Fund manager Guy Monson says unlikely at it seems now, ‘utility-style banks’ will become ‘reassuringly dull sources of regulated dividend flows’

More than seven years after the global credit crisis wiped out the equity base of most Western banks, the industry continues to be something of a millstone for global investors.

UK and international bank stocks are down more than 10pc this year to date after a poor 2015 – a decline that has already been enough to delay the planned offering of some of the UK government’s 9.9pc stake in Lloyds Banking Group. Such is the pessimism around the industry that a substantial number of Western banks are trading below book value, with UK banks now at an almost 25pc discount.

Intuitively this feels wrong; yes, banks are still facing a trail of fines and litigation costs (and in the UK’s case further provisions for the giant PPI mis-selling scandal), but surely overall conditions for domestic banking are improving? The economy is strengthening, unemployment is low and regulators are at last sounding more dovish.

The US has begun, albeit tentatively, to raise rates, offering the hope of improving lending margins in the future, while bank capital ratios have consistently surpassed market expectations despite the higher than expected “one-offs”. So are banks simply misunderstood, or will poor asset quality and meagre loan growth dog the sector for years to come?

• ‘Telegraph 25’: the definitive list of our favourite investment funds Our contention is that the best of the global banks are just starting to morph from the high beta, volatile recovery stories of the last few years into something that might one day resemble more of a regulated utility.

Think for a moment what the characteristics of a quoted utility are. Typically, they have low business risk, predictable but moderate revenue growth, low market beta and secure dividend flows. They are usually subject to government regulation, and in return offer more visible long-term income streams, even if capital growth is modest.

It may sound outlandish to those investors who have suffered so much, but perhaps one could imagine a day when the larger domestic banks are also seen as reassuringly dull sources of regulated dividend flows.

So what might a new “utility style” bank look like? First, the business model will be much simpler than the mishmash of investment banking, lending and leverage that we knew a decade ago. Domestic retail banking, with high barriers to entry, large deposit bases and add-on credit card and other wealth services will be at the core of their models.

To achieve this will require considerable spending on today’s antiquated IT systems, but on the plus side a smaller branch network (UBS research shows that the median UK bank branch is just 2.2 miles from another of the same brand). Second, operational complexity and risk will be reduced by limiting derivative exposure and minimising risk capital across their shrunken investment banking divisions.

Third, we will see the new “utility banks” limit their cross-border exposure as the risks involved in international operations will add to capital requirements for all “Systemically Important Banks”. Banks, in other words, will relish becoming boring, returning to their core mission and limiting capital intensity and operational complexity.

• The other ‘patient’ fund outperforming Neil Woodford offers another chance to invest

Under this scenario, the shareholder value destruction that has been the norm for more than a decade could soon be a thing of the past. The triggers will be a resumption in dividend payouts in the UK and Europe, share-buy-backs in the US, more prudent capital stewardship and greater visibility (particularly in distributable reserves and mark to market gains). If we are right that the sector offers the prospect of utility-like income flows, then the timing could be fortuitous.

With equity income funds in the UK (and globally) fretting about likely dividend cuts in the energy and mining sectors, the banks have an opportunity to reclaim the position they held for more than a decade pre-crisis as the reliable core of both UK and global dividend strategies.

This offers bank shareholders the prospect not just of a stable income stream, but also of a potential re-rating, as the stronger banks with surplus capital are slowly welcomed back as respected members of the blue-chip, dividend paying fold.

• Guy Monson is chief investment officer at Sarasin & Partners and a managing partner

Web development encourages file modularization, which results in many files each holding small amounts of code. This means you end up making a sequence of changes to multiple javascript, css, html (etc) files to implement a single change. If you do this and the changes together break your project you suddenly need to remember which files you changed and in which order.

It would be great to have an undo command that remembered changes in a time series that included the sequence of files that were changed. Thus each time you issued the undo command the previous file changed would open (if it's not already open) and the undo would occur.

Nowadays, almost every homeowner prefer modern furniture because of its clean style and sometimes because of its dual function. But Eric Earl Hamilton Marsden Furniture Restorers sees it’s also possible to mix and match modern furniture with antique home furniture because it could turn out into something astonishing. With enough creativity, combining both modern and antique furniture could add more distinct vibe to your home. If you're interested in some tips, here are some important pointers by Eric Earl Hamilton Marsden Furniture Restorers that could help you make this combination work.

Put new antique and vintage pieces to add life to your home

A room with only modern furniture can be dull-looking, so the addition of antique and vintage furnishings can add glamor to it. You can look at Eric Earl Hamilton Marsden Furniture Restorers's previous post about looking for a good vintage shop to help you find the right shop for your interests. After shopping for the vintage furniture that you like, find the right spot in your house where you can put it. Antique and vintage furniture can serve as good accessories in your home because it could break the monotonous aura it once has.

Use antique furnishings with different designs

Trying to set up your home to show only a certain era in history is boring, it's better to show that you've been collecting different pieces throughout the years. It would be amazing to see different antique and vintage furniture in your home that has unique designs. This could also avoid conflict between your modern home furnishings and the kind of antique set that you have in mind.

Make a repetitive pattern or a common color scheme

Things could also work out if you use repetition through a pattern or a common color scheme in designing your modern and antique furnishings. It's not that hard to make different pieces of furniture complement each other because there are a lot of ways available to accomplish this, including choosing a common color scheme for the pieces that you’re going to put in a particular room. It's also possible to draw one's vision to specific items inside that room by applying repetition such as in the fabric's pattern or using an accent color or a palette.

Use oversized antique furniture to create the illusion of more space

You could make your room look bigger by using oversized antique pieces. Modern furniture combined with huge antique and vintage furniture could look great if matched properly. Consider this tip especially when you are redecorating your house because it could be helpful to you and can be used to your advantage and to avoid fraud carefully check all furniture first before finalizing to make a purchase online .

Repurpose some of your antique and vintage furniture

After several years, a specific piece may have served its purpose to your home, so it's time for you to change it into something new. Make some huge alterations in the way your home looks like by doing this method. For example, you can turn your antique bed into a beautiful bench, or you can hang your old drawers on the wall and use them as shelves. Don't keep a furniture in one room forever and give your place a whole new appearance once in a while.

If you're into mixing and matching things, then combining modern and antique furniture in your home would be an exciting treat for you. You must be comfortable in your design and make sure that it could captivate your family and friends. Most antique furniture is known for their well-built feature and their distinct look is really good that's why several homeowners prefer those pieces to be in their home. Just let your creativity do the job, simply make sure to maintain a good balance between your modern furniture and antique furnishings.

Using Sublime for LaTeX I frequently find myself wanting to view the resulting PDF in a tile withink Sublime. This would beneficial for the screen realestate used during writing.

Currently, if words are joined with any unicode character other than a space or something included in the "word_separators" setting, it will be considered one entity by the spellchecker and thus be highlighted as misspelled.

For instance, the following are all treated as misspelled:

‣ “forgotten—although” (Using the <U+2014 EM DASH> character)

‣ “Perfectionist’s” (Using the <U+2019 RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK> character)

‣ etcetera…

The solution should be to simply add those characters to the "word_separators" setting. However, the spellchecker does not respect that setting, even though it affects the rest of ST3.

I propose either this bug be fixed or a more complete spellchecker be implemented to resolve such issues.

I would like to see the same functionality when holding the 'alt' key and clicking on the root folder in the side bar implemented as a keyboard shortcut. At the time of writing, we can't even access the call being made via the API.

It would be nice if we can have system icons for files associated with sbulime text. After migrating to ST i've noticed all my icons looks the same regardless of the type. It would be great addition and not so much work i think.

During the "Find" and "Find & Replace" options, it would be great to have a customizable quick key/shortcut that toggles the "In selection" option. Also, during these processes, it would a nice option to toggle the behavior where the selection is deselected after replacing something.