The price involved, believed to be around pounds 35m, is peanuts for a business of NationsBank’s size, but it can now concentrate on building up its preferred capital markets business in London.. The number of homeowners in arrears or facing repossession fell significantly in 1995 in the wake of mortgage rate cuts and a drop in unemployment rates, a building society claimed yesterday, writes Nic Cicutti. Birmingham Midshires, a top-10 society, said its own calculations suggested repossessions would remain stable at about 50,000 in December 1995, compared with the same time a year earlier.
The number of people in arrears for 12 months, usually regarded as those most vulnerable to repossession orders from lenders, will have fallen from 117,000 a year ago to fewer than 90,000 last month.Those in arrears on their mortgages between six and 12 months are also expected to decline, from 133,700 to around 108,000.The society’s arrears and repossessions estimates, issued each year, come days before official statistics from the Council of Mortgage Lenders, the industry’s trade body.A Midshires spokesman said yesterday: “The drop in unemployment over the past year has helped. Cuts in interest rates have also made it easier for people paying off their debts.”Many people are also saying the most important thing is their home and if the difference means giving up a holiday abroad to pay off their debts, that’s what they do.”Woolwich, Halifax and Alliance & Leicester building societies confirmed yesterday that there had been a slight improvement in arrears problems with repossession numbers remaining broadly stable.The arrears prediction came as Britain’s big banks recorded a dismal month for home loans, with net mortgage lending down from pounds 686m in November to pounds 554m last month. New approvals were down 34 per cent on the previous month, from 29,291 to 19,241 in December.The drop in net lending is even more significant when compared with December last year, when it stood at pounds 647m.. “They convinced us that Panmure Gordon’s capabilities fit more into their long-term strategy than into our own.

Theirs is a European strategy, ours is much more North American,” said Richard Roddey, head of NationsBank Europe.There was speculation last night that Nationsbank, which is the third- largest in the US, was getting out of Panmure because the broking house complicated a separate acquisition plan that was more in line with its strategy. Over the past year it has been hiring aggressively, notably expanding its securities business. Dresdner, Germany’s number two, quickly followed suit, buying Kleinwort Benson last summer for pounds 1bn.WestLB, a public sector bank with total assets of pounds 280bn, made plain last year its plans to build its global business around West Merchant Bank in London.It first approached NationsBank last summer. However, Christmas trading was disappointing, with management blaming a difficult market Storehouse shares closed down 1p at 293p.. Westdeutsche Landesbank yesterday became the latest German giant to make an important investment banking push in the City, with the purchase of the broker Panmure Gordon from NationsBank of the US. The purchase price was not disclosed, but is believed to be around pounds 35m.

Panmure Gordon has been bought to plug the equities gap, which is the main weakness in WestLB’s plans to build up a global investment banking presence through its London-based unit, West Merchant Bank.
“This is an important building block on which we hope to expand our European equities activities as well as looking to increasing in emerging markets,” said Patrick Macdougall, chief executive of West Merchant Bank.Deutsche Bank, the biggest of the German banks, was the first to target London as the base for its ambitions to become one of the world’s leading investment banks by the end of the decade, centered on Deutsche Morgan Grenfell. Its profits jumped by 120 per cent to pounds 9.3m in the six months to October. Christmas trading was also poor, with the company blaming aggressive price competition on toys.The sale would be welcomed in the City, which feels the success of Boots the Chemist is being held back by losses in other areas.Tony Shiret, retail analyst at BZW, said: “There is logic to the deal. It would give more scale to Mothercare and it would have greater buying power than Boots.