Is Marcus the new Soros?

On 27th September 2018, Goldman Sachs (Goldmans) launched its first foray into retail banking outside the USA with the establishment in the UK of its online savings account called Marcus. Offering an interest rate of 1.5% on sterling deposits, the account went straight to the top of the various, best easy access savings account tables.

Of course, older heads may remember the Icelandic and Indian banks offering market beating rates prior to the GFC, but this is Goldmans so it’s different this time!

Goldmans is no doubt pleased to be seen as the champion of the small saver in the UK. Savers in the UK have seen the base rate move from 0.25% in October 2017 to 0.75% in August 2018 but few if any institutions have passed on the 50bps uplift to their depositors. Indeed, the government’s National Savings arm has been lowering interest rates on its products, most notably removing the RPI linkage for its index-linked products from May 2019.

So the disruption to the traditional mainstream banking and building society structure has been welcomed by savers. In fact, so aggressive is the Goldmans offering that even the challenger banks cannot match the rate it now offers. Furthermore, the rate offered seems to be uncorrelated to the group’s credit rating.

 

The question no one seems to be asking is, “What is Marcus doing with the deposits”? Ford Money is raising funds but we know that within Ford there is a large vehicle financing operation. Similarly Tesco and West Bromwich have retail activities on the other side of the balance sheet.

In respect of Goldmans, there is no corresponding advertising of loan products, so what assets are Goldmans buying? Goldmans could simply be lending in the sterling interbank market but my feeling is that it is selling sterling and buying dollars, a nice carry trade as the USA has somewhat higher short-term interest rates as liquidity tightens as a result of the Fed shrinking its balance sheet.  

Goldmans alumni feature among noted EU “remainers” in the UK. Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England is also a Goldmans alumnus. Brexiteers have feared that a financial crisis could be engineered to frustrate a Brexit on 29^th March 2019. They could be right. Some fear that the remainer Chancellor, Philip Hammond, would welcome such a crisis, if not actively engineer it.

George Soros famously shorted the pound in 1992 in anticipation of the UK leaving the ERM pegging mechanism. When it occurred in September that year, the BoE responded with higher interest rates to protect sterling. Perhaps Marcus is in the vanguard this time.

Notably, Goldmans didn’t launch Marcus until after Carney had agreed to stay on beyond 5^th June 2019 in order to steady the UK through the post-Brexit era. This decision mitigated Goldman’s risk with Marcus. Firstly, Carney is an arch rate dove and has not even considered normalizing UK interest rates even 10 years after the GFC. This means that a rise in interest rates after Brexit is unlikely, thus putting sterling at risk of declining further and enhancing any short sterling position. Secondly, Goldmans should be able to read the nuances better than most in the guidance given by their alumni. Therefore, they should be ahead of the game were the BoE to make any “surprise” moves. Of course, if, in the case of Marcus, it successfully corners the UK’s retail deposit market, then the BoE and the Government will be taking guidance from Goldmans!  

Apparently, the name Marcus was selected as it is the name of one of the bank’s original founders. Knowing how smug, investment bankers like to dream up codenames for the various deals they construct with an intellectual allusion, I suggest that Marcus is a reference to a character in Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus.

 
At the end of the total carney (sorry carnage) in Titus Andronicus, Marcus is one of two adult survivors and thus in a position to install his brother as Emperor of Rome (the then EU). The twist in this case, which Shakespeare would have liked, is that dumb Brexiteers are probably putting the most shekels into Marcus and thus reducing the likelihood of the clean, "no deal" Brexit they so desire.