Latest news with #RBS
Spectator
04-06-2025
- Business
- Spectator
In praise of Michael O'Leary
NatWest has returned to full private-sector ownership 17 years after the £46 billion bailout that took it into state hands – and five years after the name swap which reduced the once globally trumpeted Royal Bank of Scotland to a humble north-of-the-border branch network, while promoting its English subsidiary NatWest to become the parent brand. RBS shareholders who were almost wiped out but hung on to what are now NatWest certificates have seen their shares triple in value since 2023, finally surpassing the bailout price. HM Treasury took a £10.5 billion loss on the whole rescue exercise, which required a decade-long series of placements and buybacks to filter the taxpayers' 84 per cent holding back into the market as the bank's performance gradually recovered. But few would argue it was badly managed or wrong in the first place. Fred Goodwin's RBS, crippled by his hubristic bid for the Dutch group ABN Amro on top of a balance-sheet full of toxic debt, fully deserved to fail. But its customers did not deserve to lose their deposits and livelihoods, and when chancellor Alistair Darling received a call from Goodwin's chairman Sir Tom McKillop on 7 October 2008 telling him RBS would fail the next day, Darling had to set aside any consideration of moral hazard and step in: chaos would have ensued if he hadn't. The workaday NatWest – which never had a coherent strategy for the era of globalised banking that died with that phone call – has survived, despite a continuing tide of branch closures, as a relatively trusted high-street brand. I'm pleased to see chairman Rick Haythornthwaite talking about a 'simpler, safer' bank with a 'UK-focused business model'.
Daily Record
04-06-2025
- Automotive
- Daily Record
Vintage vehicles to tour Ayrshire this summer with new route announced
The annual procession of vintage commercial trucks, tractors, buses and more will be on the road and heading though the region over one weekend in July. Fans of vintage transport and vehicles from a bygone era are in for a treat next month when the Ayrshire Roadrun returns. The annual procession of vintage commercial trucks, tractors, buses and more will be on the road and heading though the region over the weekend of Saturday, July 12 and Sunday, July 13. And you can get up close to these amazing vehicles as they'll be on display at the Barony Campus, in Cumnock, before the convoy sets off. There will be a static display at the school car park from 9am until 12noon on Saturday, July 12. The convoy will then set off, turning right at the roundabout and taking the third exit to the A76 towards Kilmarnock. Spectators can see the convoy on the road at the following times and destinations: Mauchline 12.10pm, Crossroads 12.15pm, Galston 12.20pm; Moscow 12.25pm, Waterside 12.30pm, Malletsheugh 12.40pm; Wild Swimmer Loch 12.45pm, Kingsford 1pm, Fullwood 1.15pm; Neilston 1.45pm, Uplawmoor 2pm, Greenacres 2.10pm; Barcraigs Resevoir 2.20pm, Beith 2.30pm; Wilson's Auctions 2.40pm; Dalgarven 2.50pm, Kilwinning 3pm, then along the A78/A77 from 3pm to 4.30pm to Portpatrick. On the Saturday, the convoy will be seen at Galloway Point Caravan Park and around the Main Harbour at Portpatrick. A spokesperson for the organisers said: 'This year's route has never been done before in the 40 years of the Run, so it's something different.' On the Sunday from 11am, vehicle owners will then start to head off from Portpatrick following a route back to the A75 for Castle Douglas. Once there, owners can enjoy a walk, fuel up and head home in the direction of their choice, although the A713, past Loch Ken, is a scenic option for those heading back to Ayrshire. To find out more, or to join the Ayrshire Roadrun this year, get in touch with the event organisers on 07980 315932 or e-mail jsm@ Electronic donations can be made by the entrants at RBS, sort code 83-45-00, account 19057307, ref: Vintage Vehicle Village (Heritage Centre) Cumnock.
Edinburgh Live
04-06-2025
- Health
- Edinburgh Live
New variant of Covid discovered as doctors warn of unusual symptoms
Our community members are treated to special offers, promotions and adverts from us and our partners. You can check out at any time. More info A new COVID strain sends a shiver across the UK as cases of the NB. 1.8.1 variant lead to unusual symptoms. Northern Ireland has confirmed at least seven individuals afflicted by this fresh coronavirus mutation, signalling a stark turn in the pandemic's path. "Common symptoms include sore throat, fatigue, fever, mild cough, muscle aches and nasal congestion. Gastrointestinal symptoms may also occur in some cases," reveals Dr Lara Herrero, a noted virologist and research leader from Griffith University. READ MORE - Kate Middleton's heartbreaking four-word admission about niece Lilibet READ MORE - Heartbroken Edinburgh grandad loses £250k in scam with fraudsters posing as RBS staff The less common gastrointestinal symptoms reported are abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, and more severe digestion-related issues, with The Mirror shedding light on the exhaustive list of symptoms tied to NB. 1.8, reports the Mirror. With its swift escalation, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has now tagged NB. 1.8. 1 as a "variant under monitoring", intensifying concerns over its ability to slip past the immunity forged by vaccines or earlier infections. NB. 1.8.1's footing is already strong in Hong Kong and China, and cases have sprung up in the US, Australia, and even in favoured holiday spots like Egypt, Thailand, and the Maldives, as chronicled by the Daily Star. WHO data reveals a significant jump in the strain from 2.5% to 10.7% of submitted global sequences within four weeks, sparking international worry. A WHO spokesperson explained: "SARS-CoV-2 continues to evolve, and between January and May 2025, there were shifts in global SARS-CoV-2 variant dynamics. At the beginning of the year, the most prevalent variant tracked by WHO at the global level was XEC, followed by KP.3.1.1. "In February, circulation of XEC began to decline while that of LP.8.1 increased, with the latter becoming the most detected variant in mid-March. Since mid-April, the circulation of LP.8.1 has been slightly declining as NB.1.8.1 is increasingly being detected." Specialists note that NB. 1.8.1 has numerous mutations that "may infect cells more efficiently than earlier strains". "However, the WHO has not yet observed any evidence it causes more severe disease compared to other variants. Reports indicate symptoms of NB.1.8.1 are expected to be similar to those of other Omicron subvariants."
CNBC
04-06-2025
- Business
- CNBC
CNBC's UK Exchange newsletter: A lament for the losses on Royal Bank of Scotland
In my more than 30 years in financial journalism, few memories are stronger than those of Tuesday, April 22, 2008, the day Royal Bank of Scotland — then one of the world's biggest banks — announced it was tapping shareholders for £12 billion ($16 billion). The sum was, at the time, a record for a rights issue by a European company and followed the U.K. bank's calamitous acquisition, the previous autumn, of the Dutch lender ABN AMRO. That deal was supposed to have been the crowning glory of Fred Goodwin, the RBS chief executive, a former accountant who, for the previous eight years, had established himself as the sector's biggest name following RBS' takeover of National Westminster Bank (NatWest) in early 2000. As deputy to CEO George Mathewson, Goodwin had earned the nickname "Fred The Shred" for his cost-cutting prowess. He was no shrinking violet; nor was Mathewson himself, who won notoriety in 2001 when he shrugged off shareholder criticism of that year's executive bonuses by saying "they would not win bragging power in a Soho wine bar." That confidence ran right through RBS. In March 2001, barely a year after the NatWest acquisition completed, Goodwin — in a typically laconic remark — told me he was contemplating "mercy killings" of other U.K. banks. Those killings never came to pass but, in the subsequent six years, RBS quadrupled in size as it made a string of acquisitions including of U.K. insurers Churchill and Direct Line, the U.S. lender Charter One (for a then eye-watering $10.5 billion), a 10% stake in Bank of China and, somewhat improbably, the car dealership Dixon Motors in April 2002. That year saw him crowned Businessman of the Year by Forbes magazine. By the time he launched the bid for ABN AMRO in April 2007, trumping a deal the latter had previously agreed with Barclays, Goodwin was top dog in U.K. banking. All of which made that rights issue in April 2008 so dramatic. A press conference was hastily convened for midday at RBS's old London headquarters. (The global head office, opened in 2005, was a gigantic campus at Gogarburn, on the outskirts of Edinburgh, built at a cost of £350 million on a site formerly occupied by a psychiatric hospital and nicknamed "Fred's Folly" by locals). I took my place in the presentation center on the ground floor of the building alongside Peter Thal Larsen, then banking editor of the Financial Times, as Tom McKillop, the career pharmacist who had succeeded Mathewson as RBS chairman in 2006, thanked us for coming and invited Goodwin to make his presentation. Gone was the super-confident figure to whom we had become accustomed. "He looks like a condemned man mounting the scaffold," I whispered to Peter. During the press conference, McKillop had to fend off questions about whether Goodwin would be dismissed, pushing back at suggestions that the board were "patsies" who had not sufficiently challenged their CEO. "There is no single individual responsible for these events, and to look for a sacrificial lamb just misses the whole point," McKillop said. I wrote in my diary that night: "McKillop came close to losing it a couple of times, particularly when grilled on the board composition. Fred Goodwin looked chastened but composed." This wasn't an investment — it was a rescue Memories of that day came flooding back when, at the end of last week, the U.K. government finally sold its remaining shareholding in NatWest (as RBS was rechristened in July 2020). By the time RBS got its money in 2008, its share price had fallen by a quarter, wiping more from its stock market value than it raised in the rights issue. On Oct. 7, 2008, with corporate customers rushing to withdraw their money, McKillop was forced to ask Alistair Darling, the then Chancellor, for a bailout that eventually cost Goodwin his job. As has been well documented, Gordon Brown's government took control of the bank, pumping in £45.5 billion in 2008 and 2009 to acquire a stake that peaked at nearly 85%. Over the years, the government has recouped some £35 billion via fees, dividends and share sales, crystallizing a loss on disposal of nearly £10.5 billion. That figure has, naturally, featured heavily in U.K. media coverage. However, much of the commentary has overlooked that the government concluded more than a decade ago that a loss would be made on the shareholding, as well as the fact that this was never supposed to be an investment generating a positive return for taxpayers — it was a rescue. One commentator even suggested RBS/NatWest should have been allowed to fail, arguing that "we could have surely done something more productive with all the money that was tied up in NatWest for the last 17 years," rather overlooking the catastrophic impact the bank's failure would have had. At the time of the rescue, RBS's balance sheet was bigger than the entire U.K. economy. That the U.K. taxpayer lost £10.5 billion over a 17-year period is, of course, depressing. But it is compounded by the fact that, during the period, RBS/NatWest was obliged to offload a number of valuable assets, including Direct Line and its U.S. banking business Citizens, as conditions of its bail-out (the U.K. was, at the time, subject to the European Commission's state aid rules). Much money was also wasted trying to carve out a separate retail bank which was to have been demerged in the name of enhancing competition, again at the behest of Europe, under the exhumed Williams & Glyn brand. Saddest of all was the forced sale of WorldPay, a payments processing business, to U.S. private equity firms Bain Capital and Advent International for just $3 billion in August 2010. The business was later floated on the London Stock Exchange, later still taken private and then sold in March 2019 to the U.S. fintech firm FIS for $43 billion — a considerably bigger loss of value than anything endured by the U.K. government on its RBS/NatWest shares. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that had the U.K. not been bound by the European Commission's state aid rules, as is the case today, the destruction of value would have been far lower. A couple of things are probably more important, longer term, than any loss incurred by taxpayers. The first is that the lessons from the RBS collapse have been properly learned. Many people now working in senior positions in U.K. financial services were still at school or college at the time of the bailout, but institutional memory of the event remains exceptionally strong, not least among U.K. regulators. The main reason RBS failed, exacerbated by the hubristic ABN AMRO acquisition and the procyclical U.K. financial regulations at the time, was because it was over-leveraged. Post-financial-crisis regulation has aimed at reducing procyclicality and banks have been obliged to increase their capital buffers. The second is that under Goodwin's successors — Stephen Hester, Ross McEwan, Alison Rose and Paul Thwaite — RBS/NatWest has been reshaped into a financially robust and highly profitable lender well-placed to contribute to U.K. growth in coming years thanks, in particular, to its strong position in business banking. Much of the profit it throws off in the coming years is likely to be handed back to shareholders in the form of dividends and share buy-backs. On that basis, while some will celebrate the fact that a line has been drawn by the government removing itself from NatWest's shareholder register, others will question why, exactly, it could not have held onto its shareholding for a little longer. It would be interesting to hear what readers think.'We can't afford not to do this': Former defense secretary talks UK arms spend Former U.K. Defence Secretary Penny Mordaunt tells Silvia Amaro the UK's new defense spend pledge "is not worth the paper it's written on" without the money to accompany it. Jim O'Neil: Donald Trump is undermining the cyclical and structural outlook for the U.S. dollar Jim O'Neil, former U.K. Treasury Minister and former chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, joins CNBC's "Squawk on the Street" to discuss how the U.S. dollar's global dominance may be challenged, whether alternatives to the dollar exist, and more. Who owns London's (privately owned) public spaces? Privately-owned public spaces — or POPS — have transformed cities over the past sixty years. But their ownership is regularly questioned — and with it, their design, accessibility and what they've put on a war footing with defense overhaul — but is it too little, too late? Analysts and economists argue that the U.K.'s new defense spending plans could ultimately prove to be too little, too late — and may be difficult to deliver, given fiscal constraints in the U.K. UK growth to be reined in by public finance squeeze, OECD warns. While the budget deficit is expected to improve from 5.3% in 2025 to 4.5% in 2026, according to OECD forecasts, debt interest spending remains high. Trump's visa ban could be Britain's big break in the race for top Chinese talent. British universities are preparing to attract international Chinese students after President Donald Trump's administration cracked down on visas for Chinese students studying in the U.S.U.K. stocks have kicked off the new month with a whimper rather than a bang, with both the FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 near-flat over the last two sessions. That's more so a reflection of broadly cautious market sentiment than negativity toward U.K. assets, as uncertainty over the global trade outlook continues to muddy the trading waters. Prime Minister Keir Starmer's defense spending plan gave a modest boost to stocks in the sector such as Rolls-Royce, BAE Systems and Babcock, all of which have soared in the year-to-date. Sterling, meanwhile, has seen a solid few sessions despite a dip Tuesday, with the pound back above the $1.35 level. The greenback has become one of the most punished assets on the back of U.S. tariff tensions, which ratcheted up late last week following President Donald Trump's announcement of 50% duties on steel imports.
Daily Record
04-06-2025
- Business
- Daily Record
Heartbroken grandad loses £250k in RBS scam as fraudsters pose as staff
A Scots grandfather was left in tears after cruel scammers posing as Royal Bank of Scotland staff stole £250k he'd saved for his family— now he's fighting to get it back. A grandad has told how ruthless scammers posing as Royal Bank of Scotland staff stole £250k put aside for his family's inheritance. Raymond Lumsden, 71, was devastated after falling victim to a sophisticated online scam. While he described the 'horrible' fraudsters as the principal villains, he has also hit out at RBS staff for failing to spot red flags before approving the transfer of money to the criminals' account. The retired businessman from Edinburgh hoped to grow his savings for to leave to his loved ones, but instead says the fraud has left him traumatised and thousands of pounds out of pocket. Raymond's nightmare began in January when he responded to a Facebook advert claiming to offer high returns on savings through Royal Bank of Scotland International (RBSI). After filling in his details, he was contacted by someone claiming to be a bank employee and shown professional-looking documents, email addresses and even LinkedIn profiles that matched the names and photos of legitimate staff. Raymond's nightmare began in January when he responded to a Facebook advert claiming to offer high returns on international bond investments through Royal Bank of Scotland International (RBSI). He told the Record: 'I thought the offer looked brilliant. I definitely didn't think it was a scam. There was never a doubt in my mind I was dealing with a legitimate Royal Bank employee.' Raymond then visited his local RBS branch in Corstorphine, Edinburgh, where staff approved his investment transaction with no questions asked - despite Raymond presenting emails that said he needed to send the money to a compliance solicitor's account at RBSI - rather than directly to the bank itself. The fraudsters even gave Raymond access to a fake RBSI online portal where he believed he could track his investment. But weeks later, his world came crashing down when RBS's fraud team phoned him to say they suspected he had been scammed. He continued: 'I didn't believe them at first You could have knocked me over with a feather.' The pensioner is now angry that his bank failed to spot the warning signs, especially when he later discovered that his money had been transferred to a Halifax account - not an RBS one as he had believed. He added: 'No one in the branch questioned if it might be a scam. They didn't do a single check." RBS, which is owned by NatWest Group, has now refunded Raymond £207,000 - but refused to reimburse the remaining £43,000. Raymond has since enlisted the help of National Fraud Helpline solicitors to recover the outstanding cash, who have launched a case with the Financial Ombudsman. Lawyer Fiona Bresnen said: 'Raymond had checked with staff if this was the correct procedure and was reassured that it was fine. He even showed bank staff the email exchanges which mentioned the compliance solicitor but was told that it was okay to transfer the money. This should have raised immediate red flags." Join the Daily Record WhatsApp community! Get the latest news sent straight to your messages by joining our WhatsApp community today. You'll receive daily updates on breaking news as well as the top headlines across Scotland. No one will be able to see who is signed up and no one can send messages except the Daily Record team. All you have to do is click here if you're on mobile, select 'Join Community' and you're in! If you're on a desktop, simply scan the QR code above with your phone and click 'Join Community'. We also treat our community members to special offers, promotions, and adverts from us and our partners. If you don't like our community, you can check out any time you like. To leave our community click on the name at the top of your screen and choose 'exit group'. If you're curious, you can read our Privacy Notice. Raymond believes that if even the most basic checks had been carried out, he would not have lost any cash at all. He added: 'I've been with RBS for over 40 years. I trusted them." Now he just wants to recover what's left of the money he had hoped would go to his grandchildren. He said: "They've taken the kids' money and it would mean the world to get the rest of it back." A Royal Bank of Scotland spokesperson said: 'While we can't comment on a case that is at the Ombudsman, if a customer is dissatisfied with their bank's decision, we would always advise them to speak to the Ombudsman themselves who will support with the claim including providing specialised knowledge for free." Impersonation scams take place scammers pretend to be a person whose organisation you trust, in order to trick you in to giving them money or sensitive information. Scammers can use artificial intelligence (AI) to make their scams more realistic. They can make fake videos of celebrities, phone calls from people you know or websites and emails that look official. Be extra cautions of any unexpected contact.
