Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has sold The Priory Group to private equity firm, Advent International. The independent mental health business, which is best known for its treatment of celebrities with addiction problems, is changing hands for up to £925 million, although the disposal will net RBS only around £133 million. Priory operates from 66 [...]
The chairman of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has admitted that large numbers of bankers are paid more than they are worth. Appearing on BBC Two’s “Britain’s Banks: Too Big to Save?” programme, to be screened tonight, Sir Philip Hampton explains that the “star quality” worthy of high remuneration seems to filter down to employees [...]
The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has fined Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and subsidiary, NatWest, £2.8 million for multiple failings in the way in which they have been handling customers’ complaints. The banks were found to have responded inadequately to more than half the complaints reviewed by the regulator, which also found an unacceptably high [...]
The National Audit Office (NAO) has been taking stock of the Treasury’s Asset Protection Scheme (APS), set up in 2009 to protect banks against future losses on their riskiest assets. The scheme was intended to free-up banks’ balance sheets to allow lending to businesses and households to continue but in a report published today, the [...]
The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has reportedly agreed to publish in full the findings of its supervisory investigation into Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), and near collapse of the bank. The regulator previously stated that information gathered from RBS during the course of the review was to remain confidential under the Financial Services and Markets [...]
The scale of government support currently provided to UK banks has fallen from its peak of £955 billion, to £512 billion (as at 1st December 2010), according to the National Audit Office (NAO). In addition, the watchdog is predicting that there will be no overall loss to the taxpayer on the main guarantees, namely the [...]
Shares in UK banks have fallen this morning as the outcome of discussions between the Irish Government and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are awaited. Reports of UK banks’ exposure to the Irish debt crisis vary but RBS and Lloyds Banking Group are both understood to be significantly exposed. In March, Ireland established a National [...]
In its “United Kingdom: Selected Issues Paper” published yesterday, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) acknowledges that UK banks performed above average in the recent CEBS stress tests of European banks. However, the paper warns that strengthening liquidity ratios could prove to be challenging for some UK banks, given that there are “significant” refinancing needs over [...]
Which? believes that Britain’s savers are missing out on more than £12 billion a year by keeping their money in accounts that pay “miserly” rates. According to research from the consumer group, almost half of the 1,200 plus savings accounts available in the UK pay 0.5% interest or less, with one in four accounts paying [...]
The BBC has reported that only the three UK banks rescued by the taxpayer, plus one other, have signed up to the government’s code of conduct on taxation. Lloyds Banking Group, Royal Bank of Scotland, Northern Rock and Standard Chartered are currently on board in the Government’s campaign to stamp out tax avoidance and Chancellor [...]
A Bank of England official has shed light on the future of the Special Liquidity Scheme (SLS), which apparently will not be extended. The Scheme was set up in April 2008 for just six months but became a lifeline to UK lenders as the wholesale money markets froze over, because it allowed them to swap [...]
Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) is to cut a further 500 jobs. The majority state-owned bank is reducing the headcount at its London-based investment banking operations, having already announced 3,500 job losses across its IT and back office operations earlier this month. RBS has seen around 27,000 job losses worldwide since it was rescue by [...]
Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) is hopeful of raising £4.7 billion in a securitisation of mortgage-backed assets. Banks and some building societies use mortgage-backed securities to raise funds for new lending. However, bad debt packaged up and sold on in the residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) market has been blamed for the credit crisis. The proposed [...]
Unite has marked the third anniversary of the run on Northern Rock and the start of the banking crisis by announcing that 100,000 jobs have been lost across in the UK’s financial services industry, since 14th September 2007. The trade union also claims that little has been done to prevent a future financial crisis and [...]
Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) is to cut 3,500 UK jobs as it closes up to 12 offices and completes the sale of 318 branches (as required by the EU Competition Commission) to Santander. The 84% state-owned group is continuing a restructure having already reduced its headcount by around 4,000 last year. According to a [...]
Climate activists have “swooped” on Royal Bank of Scotland’s (RBS) Edinburgh headquarters, at Gogarburn. Around one hundred members of Camp for Climate Action (CCA) are already established with their marquees, eco-toilets and kitchens, and hundreds more are expected to arrive over the next few days. CCA spokeswomen, Ruth McTernan, says: “It’s been a dramatic start [...]
