BT plans to attack the German telecommunications market - the largest in Europe

BT plans to attack the German telecommunications market - the largest in Europe - through a joint venture with Viag, the diversified energy group. But if Labour is bent on turning banking into a price-regulated world like water or electricity it should think again.Mr Brown's concerns about lack of competition among banks can be addressed far more efficiently by setting the building societies loose on them - as the present government has already done with spectacular results. As a result, banking is an immensely more competitive market than it was 15 years ago, before deregulation Mr Brown is barking up the wrong tree.. One reason is that they would be massacred by another angry broadside from Mr Brown if they did.While Labour's arithmetic is embarrassingly bad, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with its ideas for a statutory banking ombudsman and codes of practice, to beef up the present weak voluntary systems. This is a crazy way to levy charges that is unfair to borrowers, and the banks know it. But none of them has yet dared abolish free in-credit banking and charge everyone.

Only a quarter of customers pay charges, since those in credit get free banking. There is no way overdraft customers at UK branches can be financing a profits recovery on the scale we are now seeing.It is certainly true that those with overdrafts are being badly overcharged, but the reason is that they are being used to cross-subsidise the other 75 per cent who do not pay. And as for the 50 per cent rise in bank charges during the recession, it is hard to see where Mr Brown found the figure. It must have come from bank annual report data on fees and commissions, which embraces much more than personal bank charges.Indeed, the suggestion that the rise in bank charges fuelled the increased profits is madcap. With loan demand stagnant it has been hard to raise operating profits. It also includes the profits of several really big multinationals such as HSBC and Barclays, and all their investment banking operations, so has very little relevance to how much the banks are making from high street customers.

NatWest may have made £1.6bn last year, but it will be surprising if more than £500m of this proves to have come from UK retail banking.Much of the increase in clearing bank profits has come from falling bad debts anyway. This is a highly cyclical industry that has gone from boom to near disaster three times in the last 15 years.Mr Brown's claimed 50 per cent increase in clearing bank profits in 1994, to £10bn, comes near the top of the current cycle, when return on equity could well pass 20 per cent for a while, before the next downturn starts. Much the same low long-term profits have been seen among the rest of the clearers, whose eight-year average return on equity of 10.7 per cent only just beats the hotel industry.Something radical clearly needs to be done to raise these inadequate profits to a respectable level.Oops. surely some mistake? Aren't these the profiteering clearing banks that the shadow chancellor wants to bring under control? Can we be talking about the same organisations?You can do just about anything you like with clearing bank averages.

That is the general perception, anyway.Now consider the following. Barclays made a dismal return on shareholders' equity of 3.8 per cent over the five years to 1993, and a still meagre average of 7.6 per cent if you go back to 1986. Worse still, in the late 1980s the bank had the cheek to relieve shareholders of a large part of their cumulative dividend payments, by picking their pockets with a record-breaking rights issue.The proceeds went straight down the drain in bad debts during the recession. Most people think of them as a public service, a kind of utility. Though not a monopoly, they certainly act together as an oligopoly. Repeated attempts to differentiate themselves one from another through high-profile and costly advertising compaigns have had little imact.

To most people they are all much of a muchness, an effective cartel whose only real interest and purpose is to crunch the customer. You never know, it might even be possible to win a few votes from it Certainly that's Gordon Brown's hope Bankers have never been an easy corner to defend. Maurice and his colleagues owe it to their former company and the investors who at vast cost to themselves have financed Maurice's grand schemes and ambitions, to come clean on their intentions. To the outside world at least it appears there must be some dastardly plan afoot. Only one institution holding more than 1 per cent of the shares was prepared to support him when the time came for a show of hands His motive for revenge is as powerful as they come.