Sabadell insists sale of TSB would be ‘pointless’

SABADELL has been forced to deny that it is looking to sell crisis-hit TSB after its chairman said he wanted the bank to enter “a process of consolidation”.

Speculation that TSB’S owner was about to hoist up the “for sale” sign over the UK lender was triggered after chairman Josep Oliu was quoted by a Spanish newspaper saying the bank would look at mergers once its problems are behind it.

The Catalan bank, which snapped up TSB in 2015, said yesterday that it would consider merging the business with a rival but that “an eventual sale of TSB is simply pointless” because it was a core part of its business.

TSB is trying to recover from a nightmare year following a major IT meltdown and its boss Paul Pester being forced out.