Lloyds

Located in the heart of the City of London, the iconic Lloyd’s building is a unique construction, home to the large UK insurance and bank institution, Lloyds TSB. The site was originally home to the very first Lloyd’s building, constructed in 1928, but as the organization grew, more space was needed. Initially, an additional building was developed but in 1978, due to further expansion, the original construction was demolished and the building that now stands built and opened by Queen Elizabeth II in November 1978 after 8 years of construction.

The Lloyds building is made up of 6 towers, (3 main and 3 service) built around a rectangle area. The building is unique due to the position of the services such as lifts, staircases, water and electrical lines being on the outside of the building, leaving the space inside completely free for use without distractions.

The building itself is 88 meters tall, with 14 floors, 4 glass lifts and an adaptable interior whereby the partition walls can be moved around to create any desired office layout. The main focal point of the building is the ground floor, where the underwriting room that is overlooked by galleries on the first four floors and lit by a vaulted glass roof. The galleries are accessible from lifts inside the building, however, the remaining floors are only accessible via the glass lifts that run on the outside of the main construction. The building is entirely used as office space for the Lloyds Group, apart from the 11th floor where the committee room is found. The committee room is a dining room, originally created for the Earl of Shelburne in 1798. The room was brought across, piece-by-piece from another Lloyds building nearby.

The Lloyds building was designed by British architect Richard Rogers, known for his modern and functional design, including developments such as the Millennium Dome in Greenwich and the Pompidou Centre in Paris – where you can see some similar influences in design with the Lloyds building. The build cost was approximately £75 million.

The Lloyd’s building holds open house days for visitors to tour the building with the dates are available on the Lloyd’s website. The building is situated at 1 Lime Street, City of London and is easily accessible via the following London underground stations:

Bank – on the northern, central and city line. Additionally, Docklands Light Railway

Liverpool Street – on mainline services as well as central, circle, metropolitan, Hammersmith and city line.

Monument – on circle and district lines

The City, London’s financial district, is been home to some of the worlds most prominent financial, trading, insurance, legal and religious institutions and is a part of London that, apart from the architecture, has remained almost intact since the Romans settled in 47 A.D. The Square Mile – which actually measures 1.12 square miles, has a modest resident population of around eleven thousand, although its transient working population swells to well over 330,000 every day.

The overall Gross Value Added (GVA) for London represents around 45% of the overall sector at some £52 billion and the sector as a whole contributed tax revenues of £53.4bn.
Of the total employed in the City, 42% or 135,000 are employed in the financial sector (from cityoflondon.gov.uk 2009).

Classed as one of three key financial centres around the world, London plays host to many of the leading banks as well as the Stock Exchange and whilst The City is home to some, the influential banking and financial institutions have also spread into the Canary Wharf area. Only four of the top five UK banks are based in the City the other is in Edinburgh (RBS).

The top four London banks are: HSBC (Canary Wharf), Lloyds (City), Barclays (Canary Wharf) and Standard Chartered (City). Between them these four have market values of ~£240 bn. and assets of ~£5,500 bn.

Their employment numbers are substantial, however it is difficult to obtain exact numbers of how many are employed specifically within the 135,000 in the City of London. For that reason we look at the whole of the UK; HSBC alone has 85,000 employees in the UK, spread around its major brank and city centre network. Lloyds, in which the British Government holds a minority stake, indicates that it employs in excess of 104,000 (2010 figures). Barclays employs 146,000 (as at 2011) and Standard Chartered, 84,000.

Looking at Operating Income and stated gross margins for 2010, each is a substantial business:
HSBC – £12 bn. profit £8.3 bn.
Lloyds – £281 m, (£258 m)
Barclays – £3 bn. (profit not stated)
Standard Chartered – £3.85 bn. (profit not stated)

What is clear is that the banking sector within the UK, let alone the world has gone through an upheaval that is unprecedented and it may take some time to settle into a stable sector again. The British Government is under increasing pressure to return Lloyds to the private sector once more and is looking at many options including the restructuring of the bank into two separate – corporate and personal banking streams. Given their relative financial strength, HSBC, Barclays and Standard Chartered have demonstrated their ability to weather the financial maelstrom despite calls within Government to review and deconstruct the so called bonus culture.

Alongside the major banks, the city is home to the main regulatory body of The Bank of England, an institution to whom the key players look for guidance. It sets the level of interest (Bank Base Rate), currently at 0.5% (for a record three-years), and manages and monitors inflation by intervention in specific sectors as and when required. It is also responsible for the total amount of money flowing through the UK economy and regularly reviews this.

Lloyds, the insurance house, is also established in The City, and home to around fifty of the world’s largest insurance businesses with access to assets in excess of £40,000 bn. to support its infrastructure of risk underwriting and provides cover for every sector of business around the Globe. In excess of 20% of its revenue is derived in the UK.

Finally, the London Stock Exchange – often abbreviated to LSE, is one of the half dozen trading platforms around the world that are seen as the metre by which investors judge the health of commerce. It hosts a number of UK based indices – e.g. the FTSE 100, whereby the value of a business is posted daily in terms of its share price and capitalisation. In sheer scale, the level of activity is huge and in 2010 its market capitalisation was claimed to be £2.27 trillion spread across some 3,000 individual business listings.

Lloyds Building London

The City of London’s Financial Giants