Lloyds Banking Group, which bought HBOS at the height of the crisis, would later write off almost £20bn of the division’s £120bn loan book. In other words, the lending standards in HBOS Corporate’s business were so poor the bank barely recovered £5 for every £6 lent. Ultimately, those losses alone would more than account for the £11.5bn that the taxpayer pumped into HBOS in the original October 2008 bail-out.