Settle future of RBS, urges Bank member

BRITAIN should end the uncertainty over long-term plans for state-controlled Royal Bank of Scotland, a senior Bank of England official said yesterday.

By The Newsroom

Published 13th Jun 2013, 10:40 BST

Paul Fisher, the BoE’s markets director, said RBS’s ability to attract investors and sustain lending was being hampered by a lack of clarity over when it would be returned to the private sector and whether it might be split up.

The Government ploughed £45.8bn of public money into RBS to save it from collapse in 2008, and now holds an 81 per cent stake in the bank.

Chancellor George Osborne will signal that the time is right to offload the Government’s shareholding in an annual speech to financiers on June 19, political and industry sources said on Monday, but he is not expected to explain how. Senior parliamentarians are expected to report shortly on whether it would be better to break up RBS instead.

Outgoing Bank of England Governor Mervyn King has said RBS would have benefited from a much more radical restructuring.