So to avoid the awkwardness of a Eurozone summit in Paris excluding Europe’s biggest financial centre, Gordon Brown went to Paris before the meeting and it sounded like he and Nicolas Sarkozy were on the same wavelength about how bailouts should work.  One section of the Elysée summit declaration (version fr) says

So as to allow financial institutions to continue to ensure the proper financing of the Eurozone economy, each Member State will make available to financial institutions Tier 1 capital, e.g. by acquiring preferred shares or other instruments including non dilutive ones. Price conditions shall take into account the market situation of each involved instution. Governments commit themselves to provide capital when needed in appropriate volume while favouring by all available means the raising of private capital. Financial institutions should be obliged to accept additionnal restrictions, notably to preclude possible abuse of such arrangements at the expense of non beneficiaries.

Yet several news outlets (Bloomberg, Times, Wall Street Journal [subs. only]) that the UK plan now includes controlling stakes in RBS and HBOS, meaning that anyone concludng from previous indications that the stakes would be minority non-voting holdings with private funding given a chance would be very mistaken.  Apparently the calculation of how much capital RBS and HBOS would need to get to a comfortable level was leading to too big a number for anything short of a controlling government stake to be feasible.  It seems that European stock markets and London in particular will be opening in a few hours with a shocker.