The young upstart suffers a plunging share-price and a social-media scare
usurpers of Britain’s dominant banks think branches are old hat. Not Metro Bank. The nine-year-old lender has 66 so far, which it opens from 8am to 8pm, six days a week, and for six hours even on Sunday. So when a false rumour circulated on WhatsApp on May 11th that the bank was failing, no one who was inclined to panic had to wait until Monday. People queued at a branch in Harrow, west London, to empty their safe-deposit boxes—another Metro selling point—or just to find out what was going on.
After first-quarter earnings were revealed on May 1st the shares took another tumble. Underlying profit fell by 30%. Interest payments on debt issued last year took a toll; so did a new accounting standard for leases, thanks to all those new branches. But interest margins narrowed and deposits, which had been growing fast, fell by 3.6% in the quarter because some large customers withdrew cash after the risk-weighting foul-up.
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