Change £37bn bailout, plead banks
Updated on 15 October 2008
He may have been hailed as a saviour on the continent, but Gordon Brown is now under pressure from Britain's biggest banks to change the terms of the government's £37bn bank bailout.
It was a condition of that deal that no dividends would be paid to existing shareholdres until the government's stake was paid back.
But this programme understands the government's own advisers are trying to persuade Downing Street to lift the freeze on dividends, as it threatened to undermine the whole deal with existing shareholders dumping their shares.
That would have meant the government having to use even more taxpayers money to buy them up.
Siobhan Kennedy explains:
