Some departures from the shrinking London stock market hurt more than others. It is doubtful that Metro Bank, if it’s about to fall to an approach from a London private equity firm, will be mourned by those shareholders on the wrong end of the wild ride for the shares from £20 at listing in 2016, to £40 two years later, to a plunge and painful recapitalisation at just 30p in 2023.
In the overhyped early years, Metro said it was going to revolutionise high street banking via the novel strategy of opening expensive branches while the fuddy-duddy old guard were closing them. The party ended in an arduous tale of an accounting blunder, run-ins with regulators and a need for more capital, factors that inevitably weighed more heavily than the bank’s gimmicks such as giving free dog biscuits to the customers’ canines.
